The Nature of the Egyptian "Coup"

[Benton D Struckcheon]

Warning: actual nuance. You are actually going to have to think. Sorry.
My own take: revolutions have always succeeded if and only if the army of the nation where the revolution takes place goes over to the side of the revolutionaries, or the army is defeated. In this case, the army went over to the side of the revolutionaries. Because of Egypt's history, there is a large danger of the army just deciding to stay in power, but as this writer points out, they could have a large problem on their hands if they try:

Midwife for a pregnant Egypt

On the face of it, 30 June was a "coup": the army intervenes to remove an elected president...

A coup happens when one segment of the ruling elite (such as the military) forcefully takes over power from the other segment without or with minimal involvement of the populace. What happened in Egypt on 30 June was much more than that. It was more "revolutionary coercion" than simply a coup. The army’s intervention was the endgame of a monumental uprising in a long revolution when some 17 million people from all walks of life (Muslim, Christian, men, women, religious, secular), from Upper Egyptian towns to the cities of the Delta, displayed a collective contention unrecorded in any nation’s memory. And they did so to depose an Islamist government they deemed was busy building an electoral theocracy rather than fulfilling the promise of the revolution — bread, freedom, justice — for which so much sacrifice had been made and so much blood shed. The spirited revolutionary youth, Tamarod, worked day and night for months to mobilise, gathering some 22 million withdrawal of confidence signatures ahead of 30 June...

The question then is how to manage relations with the army: how much control can the revolutionaries exert on this entity; to what extent they can resist getting pushed around? Will they stand up to the military and police to limit their repressive practices, to protect and defend the rights of their odeological opponents against witch-hunts, to assert the will of millions who created the wonder of 30 June? The good news is that Egyptians have proven again that they possess an extraordinary spirit and drive, rarely seen elsewhere. They have mastered the art of being ungovernable. This is a formidable power in bad times.

[BlueToTheBone]

1. thanks for the post. n/t

[cali]

2. Your take is incorrect.

Furthermore, you're going to have to actually think. The French Revolution had largely succeeded by the time the military became involved on the side of the revolutionaries. Then there are more recent examples such as the "Tulip revolution" in Georgia, and many others, but never that your history is on the shaky side, so is the article you posted.

It's becoming more and more debatable how much of the public support for Morsi was engineered, but even assuming that the vast majority of it was independent of machinations, this was undeniably a coup under the law in U.S. that requires the suspension of military aid to an nation where the military overthrows an elected government.