Photos of Egypt Riots as Protestors Clash WIth Police
I wish these brave folks the best of luck with all my heart. Revolutions can work positively. As long as the US doesn’t decide to waltz in there like the own the country and irrevocably f*** things up, this nascent revolution may actually have a chance. Not just Iraq, remember how we completely destroyed Iran in the 50’s, setting mid-east democracy back by at least a century?
The Iranian Shah overthrew the massively popular and secularly democratic Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in a CIA backed coup after the PM nationalized the Iranian oil industry. Mosaddegh was very secularist, and though Iran was quite religious his popular reforms gave him massive support.
In the interest of halting ‘OMG COMUNIZM’ they propped up an unpopular dictator (the same old story), who became extremely vicious after he knew he had CIA support. This successfully drove the populace towards their religious clerics, and destroyed all the secular advances the country had made. When the people overthrew the tyrant in 1979, the religious tyranny that followed was largely the result of that CIA intervention.
TL;DR Mind our own goddamn business and maybe Egypt can remain the lone rock in a turbulent mid-east.