It's barely been a year since the Egyptian people took to the streets to remove Mubarak from leadership in hopes of electing someone better. Unfortunately what they got was an oppressive leader from the Muslim Brotherhood: Mohamed Morsi.
Over the weekend it was reported that hundreds of thousands of opponents to the Islamist president poured into the streets of Cairo over the weekend, launching a movement to force Mohammed Morsi from office on the one-year anniversary of his inauguration. Morsi's Islamist supporters vowed to support him, causing fears of violence in the country.
Some of the protests did turn into violent clashes between Morsi's supporters and the opposition. An American college student was caught in the turmoil and killed while photographing the confrontations. The 21-year-old male was working in Egypt for a non-profit education organization, teaching seven and eight-year-old students how to speak English.
TheBlaze.com describes the scene like this:
"In a sign of the explosive volatility of the country’s divisions, a hard core of young opponents broke away from the rallies and attacked the main headquarters of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood, pelting it with stones and firebombs until a raging fire erupted in the walled villa. During clashes, Brotherhood supporters opened fire on the attackers, and activists said three protesters were killed.Waving Egyptian flags and carrying posters of Morsi crossed out in red, crowds packed central Cairo’s Tahrir square, the birthplace of the 2011 uprising against autocrat Hosni Mubarak, thunderous chants of “erhal!” (i.e., “leave!”) rang out."
This morning on radio, Glenn noted that BBC described the protests that spread across Egypt as "the largest political protest in the history of the world."
"Apparently there's hundreds of thousands in multiple locations," Stu noted.
Which Stu couldn't help but point out would mean Bill Kristol's horrible Middle East projections just got even worse.
"I mean, if it is the largest political protest in the history of the world, then we have scientific evidence that says no one has ever been more wrong than Bill Kristol."
This morning, the Egyptian military also issued a 'last chance' to the Morsi regime, giving him an 48-hour ultimatum to make peace with the protestors. This is the second ultimatum Morsi has been given, but with the new pressure of these widespread protests it's unlikely one he'll be able to ignore. According to the Wall Street Journal, this ultimatum could be "setting the stage for a possible military coup," but noted that the military has emphasized it's intent is not to take power, but to "supervise the situation."
Organizers of the protests have given Morsi a deadline of Tuesday at 5pm to step down or face a campaign of civil disobedience.
"Be careful what you wish for this time," Glenn stated of the protesters. "Because it's only going to get worse."
It's hard to decipher if this is the Egyptian people realizing the mistake they made and seeking a truly different path, or another opportunity for extremists to take more control. One thing is clear from these protests: they're not happy with the U.S..
"We backed the Muslim Brotherhood. We were on the wrong side of freedom," Glenn said.
"I know I'm the one that keeps bringing it back to Bill Kristol, but the Bill Kristol book we made, the cover of the book is the Muslim Brotherhood headquarters," Stu said. "They torched it and looted it this weekend."
"I know. All of the pictures are available at TheBlaze.com. Bill Kristol, you should look. You should see what you brought. And there's only going to be more extremism out of the ashes. It's not going to go the other way. Because they don't have the right formula," Glenn explained. "It's only going to get worse from here. They will, in the end, beg for Mubarak and unfortunately so will we."