James Traub in Foreign Policy argues that “what happened in Egypt was not a second ‘revolution’ against authoritarian rule but a mass repudiation of Muslim Brotherhood rule.” He also looks at the intellectual and moral obfuscation that most of the country’s “liberals” are engaged in regarding their support for the military coup.
Morsy’s single greatest mistake, in retrospect, was failing to put [many Egyptians’] fears to rest by ruling with the forces he had politically defeated. He was a bad president, and an increasingly unpopular one. But nations with no historical experience of democracy do not usually get an effective or liberal-minded ruler the first time around. Elections give citizens a chance to try again. With a little bit of patience, the opposition could have defeated Morsy peacefully. Instead, by colluding in the banishment of the Brotherhood from political life, they are about to replace one tyranny of the majority with another. And since many Islamists, now profoundly embittered, will not accept that new rule, the new tyranny of the majority will have to be more brutally enforced than the old one.