It's Turkey Time in Egypt

"Arab Spring"? That's a laugh and a half. As Andrew McCarthy writes, nothing is flowering in Arab lands save tyranny. In fact, in Egypt, as in Turkey, the military and the Islamists are locked in a permanent power stuggle, with the latter besting the former (for now):

To roll back Ataturk’s Westernization of Turkey, the Muslim Brotherhood-allied regime of Recep Tayyip Erdogan needed to defang the armed forces. The army was, by law, the guardian of the secular order, and as it retreated an increasingly powerful and autocratic Islamist government has crushed dissent by, among other things, prosecuting journalists. The process has taken several years.

In Egypt, it has been just a few weeks. The Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi has already managed to outmaneuver the Egyptian army — which, as I warned here a year-and-a-half ago, was not to be trusted to keep Egypt in the pro-American camp — and he has made a grab for dictatorial powers. As night follows day, the crushing of dissent has begun. Sky News reports that two Egyptian journalists, harsh critics of Morsi and the Brotherhood, have been arrested and will stand trial for “incitement” and publishing information considered “insulting” to the new president. More important than this predictably tyrannical use of police powers by the state is the social climate it creates. The population, teeming with Islamic supremacists, realizes it is safe to take matters into its own hands. The mob is now attacking non-Islamist journalists just like it riots against Coptic Christians.

Egypt will go quickly. This is not a “democratic” transformation; the dictator has been replaced by the totalitarians.

I hate to say I told you so (actually, I adore saying it; it gives me a real rush), but in the earliest days, when Thomas L. Friedman and the other ninnies were going nuts in Tahrir Square, I predicted we were on "The Eve of Sharia."