This morning on radio, TheBlaze TV’s Buck Sexton joined Glenn to explain the latest on the recent uprising in Egypt. Last week Buck was in the Middle East, and during a radio interview with Glenn he warned for what was headed Egypt’s way.
The riots have become more hostile in the last couple of days, and many of the tragedies that occurred just over a year ago are repeating themselves. One unfortunate example of this is a Dutch female journalist being brutally raped by extremists in Tahrir Square. The woman has been hospitalized and in severe condition.
“The history books can now officially say that William Kristol is a moron,” Glenn quipped, referring to Kristol’s horribly inaccurate predictions regarding the Arab Spring.
Glenn, on the other hand, had a clear idea of what this would bring to the region.
“We said this is going to be much, much worse, and it never ‑‑ I remember distinctly saying it never ends with the people who started it. The only revolution that has ever happened is the American Revolution. It always goes from dictator to thugs to worse dictator,” Glenn said. “And that’s about what’s — I think that’s what’s going to happen. Buck?”
“Glenn, one of the most amazing things here is that it really is déjà vu all over again. They have not had a democracy for very long. Already after seeing that street protests don’t necessarily lead to Jeffersonian democracy, they are just coming out and saying we want something better,” Buck responded. “There’s a lot of hard work that goes into creating a civil society and a functioning journalistic democracy. That hard work has not been done. It’s largely fallen on the Muslim Brotherhood to mess this up but it’s not been easy under the circumstances. After what’s happening right now, the Muslim Brotherhood’s like, oh, okay, you’re giving us this ultimatum? Guess what. We’re going with the “or what” phase of this…as in ‘step down or what?'”
Buck continued, “you know, one of the good things about having been there last week on the ground, Glenn, is that I have sources that can update me, you know, instantaneously through either cellphone texts or e‑mail and what they are telling me is that there are people, for example, at the Muslim Brotherhood protest who are training with sticks and numb chucks actually. So they are kind of going with the Ninja motif in order to make sure they’re prepared for street clashes. These are not people that sound like they are about to say, “You know what? You’re right. Okay, military, let’s not call this a coup even though it technically is and let’s just give up power.” This is the Muslim Brotherhood. These are the guys that produced Anwar al‑Awlaki. There are the guys that have foundational ideology.”
Glenn also noted that those are the individuals this administration is supporting. And because of that, the people of Egypt are no longer fans of America.
Back when the Arab Spring first began and the Obama administration started supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, Glenn warned that these were not allies of the United States — more like extremists with suits on.
“The unintended consequences here and the thing that no one’s really looking at or talking about, even if the military is successful and it’s literally an hour by hour thing, think about this,” Buck added.
Unlike Mubarak, Buck noted that the Muslim Brotherhood will not simply sit down. They will not go away. They were being thrown in dungeons and tortured under Mubarak and stuck around long enough to take control.
“They don’t really care what this whole democracy thing is all about,” Buck explained. “It was just a means to an end anyway. So the fact that they may step down or they may not, Glenn, is not going to change and this country is effectively going to become ungovernable. You’re going to have a 90 million person mess and it’s going to be very close to, if not evolving directly into anarchy unless somebody’s able to bring things together here. Just coming out and protesting doesn’t make all the problems go away.”
Glenn believes that the military will take control — but they won’t keep it. There will be new election. Then what? Who will take leadership this time? The last attempt at a democracy in Egypt took their leadership from bad to worse. The odds that this leaves the people of Egypt with more freedom is note something Glenn sees happening down the road.
“I think you’re asking the question that so many Middle East analysts and watchers and people in the media are refusing to ask which is, what does this do? What does this say if the Muslim Brotherhood is forced to step down? Look, the fact is that they were being shown. They were exposed here as being inept, as being sort of wannabe theocrat, a glorified soup kitchen at best. That’s what the Muslim Brotherhood was, with a very nasty ideology,” Buck told Glenn.
Buck explained that there is a more extreme party that has the ability to take control: the Nour Party.
“They are crazier people than the Muslim Brotherhood,” Buck continued. “And by the way, they won substantially in the last parliamentary election. Those people, not the ones in Tahrir Square, not the ones in the media, the ones in the rest of Egypt, the tens of millions who are very religious, are very devout, they are going to say, oh, this whole democracy thing, that’s kind of a joke, isn’t it? Because when somebody wins and then some people don’t like it, they get the military to get them to step down. I’m not saying that’s how I see it but that’s how they are going to see it.”
The reason Glenn can predict a negative outcome in the uprisings in Egypt is the same reason Occupy protests turn much more violent and destructive than TEA Party protests: principles. The TEA Party stands with a set of principles peacefully, while Occupy marches against something.
“Glenn, one of the things which I think you’re getting to here is what is the, sort of the glue that holds Egyptian society together? In this country it’s the Constitution. Over there it’s quite honestly various forms of Islam,” Buck responded.
“Now the far extreme Islamic parties have the opportunity to say the other side are bad actors in this, they won’t play by the rules,” Buck continued. “And that’s why I said to you before, Glenn, nobody knows the way this shapes out. Anybody who has is quite honestly not paying attention to recent history because people were fine the last time they gathered in Tahrir Square. Déjà vu all over again.”
“This is exactly what we predicted, and I can tell you what’s going to happen next — never, ever, ever screw around with people who are willing to die because God tells them to die,” Glenn said. “In the end the extreme hard liner Islamists are the ones that will take power in Egypt and they will do it in Syria as well and they will do it eventually in Turkey, and you are going to see the restoration of a Caliphate and it is bad news for Israel. It is death, death for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people all across the globe when this thing actually shakes down.”