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Jewish World Review August 9 2011 / 9 Menachem-Av, 5771 Lion in a Cage: Hosni Mubarak on Exhibit By Paul Greenberg
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
No, it's not Louis XVI being trundled off to his execution to the jeers of the mob, soon enough to be followed by No, even those mob scenes would have been too dignified for the That part of the world has never been short of what goes before a fall, and tales of how the mighty have fallen. Both phrases are as old as the Bible, another product of the Last week the former everything was rolled into an Egyptian court of law, or at least of vengeance. On a hospital gurney. And put in a cage. Like any other wounded animal taken captive. The Arab Spring proceeds on schedule into the torrid Arab Summer. It is all according to the unvarying calendar of modern revolutions a la francaise, the pattern having been set, like so much of Western fashion, in The progression of events outlined by Crane Brinton in his regularly applicable "Anatomy of a Revolution" continues on schedule, if not ahead of it. All the revolutionary stages he identified and traced, like the progress of a disease, continue to recur in familiar order or only a slight variation thereof. The shocks follow one another from right to left across the political spectrum as power passes first to moderate reformers, then to increasingly violent movements and leaders till, like the swing of a pendulum, the revolution is finally arrested at its outward limit and begins to swing back. The outlines of the coming struggle for power in As for those brave souls who actually carried out the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, and watched so many of their number gunned down/imprisoned/tortured/exiled, they are likely to be left out of this new-old Who will now become ascendant? The odds-on favorite is the well-organized Muslim Brotherhood, backed by the swelling throngs of Islamists, Salafists and assorted True Believers who swarmed The military already begins to squirm, wondering how it can put its former commander on trial without sharing the fully earned onus of having followed his orders straight to perdition. How long before the generals, too, are being exhibited in a cage? It's going to be an interesting, even satisfying, spectacle to watch, but that doesn't mean anything good will come of it. It's an old, old story and our naifs still don't get the point: Not all that glitters is gold, and not all that revolutionizes frees. Quite the contrary. There is still such a thing as fool's gold. And it dazzles as it disappoints.
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