Krauthammer: Muslim Brotherhood ‘will lose badly’ if it battles Egyptian military
By Jeff Poor. On Friday’s “Special Report” on the Fox News Channel, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer predicted that if the Mohamed Morsi regime and the Muslim Brotherhood chose the route of going to war by creating its own military and fighting Egyptian forces instead of seeking a peaceful solution, the Muslim Brotherhood will lose.
“[The Muslim Brotherhood] is obviously the largest, the most organized and disciplined of all the elements, all the parties in Egypt,” Krauthammer said. “However, it is not a majority. It isn’t even close to a majority. And what was so remarkable about the demonstrations that led to the overthrow of the government and about the people standing behind the chief of staff when he announced the coup, where you had representatives of the Christians, of the largest and most respected Sunni Muslim mosque and university, where you had even a representative of a far more radical Islamist movement, a newer party. So you had all the elements of society lined up against the Brotherhood, each with their own grievances. So, if the Brotherhood decides that it’s going to turn to violence, it’s going to lose because you have a wall-to-wall coalition against it.”
“The irony here is that the two most disciplined institutions in the country are the ones who will decide where this goes,” Krauthammer continued. “The army has discipline, and the Brotherhood. And that’s why I think up until now the violence has been relatively restrained. The Brotherhood leadership, I think, understands that if it does an Algeria and decides it’s going to go and make war on the army, it’s going to lose and it will lose badly and be imprisoned and disperse or go back to the 1950s. If there is an outbreak, it’s going to come from a fringe of a fringe who are not under the discipline of the party. And that, I think, is possible. But that would be radical sort of al Qaida types who want to make this into a bloodbath. And they, if there are enough of them, it could actually provoke a bloodbath.”
Read more from this story HERE.
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Photo Credit: Daily CallerFears of radicalization rise as Egypt descends into chaos
By Charles Rollet. Essam el-Haddad, Morsi’s foreign policy advisor, warned on his website that the toppling of elected Islamists in Egypt would spark more terrorism than the Western-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
No major acts of terrorism have occurred so far, but the violence is worse than ever. At least 20 were killed on Friday alone as pro- and anti-Morsi protestors clashed across Egypt.
That includes four Christian Copts in the Delta town of Khosous, who were machine-gunned during sectarian clashes.
As the military arrests leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood and pro-Morsi journalists, disturbing videos have turned up showing Islamists threatening mass violence.
“I want to say to [General] al-Sisi: Beware! Know that you have created a new Taliban and Al Qaeda in Egypt,” said a bearded man in one video. Read more from this story HERE.
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Coptic priest shot dead in Egypt attack: sources
By Reuters. Gunmen shot dead a Coptic Christian priest in Egypt’s lawless Northern Sinai on Saturday in what could be the first sectarian attack since the military overthrow of Islamist President Mohamed Mursi, security sources said.
The priest, Mina Aboud Sharween, was attacked in the early afternoon while walking in the Masaeed area in El Arish.
The shooting in the coastal city was one of several attacks believed to be by Islamist insurgents that included firing at four military checkpoints in the region, the sources said. Read more from this story HERE.
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Egypt’s new regime born in chaos as violence spreads
By Kim Sengupta. There was confusion last night after Mohamed ElBaradei was authoritatively reported to have been appointed as Egypt’s interim prime minister by the acting president, Adly Mansour. He was expected take the country along a military-imposed political roadmap amid vicious strife, including growing sectarian attacks and a rising death toll.
However, this was contradicted late last night by Egyptian state television, which denied any such appointment had been made.
The former head of the International Atomic Energy Commission met the armed forces chief, General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, yesterday and, according to officials, agreed to act as executive head of a new “salvation government” until fresh elections can be held.
But shortly afterwards the Muslim Brotherhood declared that the appointment of Mr ElBaradei, who had led a coalition of left-wing groups, was “illegitimate”. “We reject this coup and all that results from it, including ElBaradei,” a senior representative of the Brotherhood was reported to have told an Islamist gathering in Cairo.
Mr ElBaradei was among liberal leaders who opposed the Islamist President Morsi, ousted by the military on Wednesday. Thousands of Brotherhood supporters in Cairo yesterday were preparing to march to a military base where the deposed president is thought to be held. Read more from this story HERE.
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Egypt’s New President Asserts Authority
By Associated Press. Egypt’s new president moved to assert his authority and regain control of the streets Saturday even as his Islamist opponents declared his powers illegitimate and issued blood oaths to reinstate Mohammed Morsi, whose ouster by the military has led to dueling protests and deadly street battles between rival sides.
But underscoring the sharp divisions facing the untested leader, Adly Mansour, his office said pro-reform leader Mohamed ElBaradei had been named as interim prime minister but later backtracked on the decision saying consultations were continuing. A politician close to ElBaradei said the reversal was due to objections by an ultraconservative Islamist party with which the new administration wants to cooperate.
Mansour’s administration, meanwhile, has begun trying to dismantle Morsi’s legacy. He fired Morsi’s intelligence chief and the presidential palace’s chief of staff. Prosecutors, meanwhile, ordered four detained stalwarts of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood held for 15 days pending an investigation into the shooting deaths of eight protesters last week.
No major violence was reported between supporters and opponents of Morsi as the two sides sought to regroup after a night of fierce clashes that turned downtown Cairo into a battlefield. Clashes were also fierce in the port city of Alexandria, where thousands from both sides fought each other with automatic rifles, firebombs and clubs.
Friday’s violence left 36 dead, taking to at least 75 the number of people killed since the unrest began on June 30, when millions of protesters took to the streets on the anniversary of Morsi’s inauguration as Egypt’s first democratically elected president. Read more from this story HERE.
