[quote=Allan from Fallbrook]
Cardiff: If things in Egypt continue to spiral out of control, it will turn into a full-blown civil war.
[/quote]
You very well could be right. There is little reason to think the outcome will be similar to 2 1/2 years ago. It wasn’t a particularly pretty transition from Mubarak to military control until the election. But it never came close to a full-blown civil war.
I think one of the big differences is that Mubarak just didn’t have a whole lot of popular support. The now former Islamist government probably still has more support that Mubarak did when he stepped down. But the military government may also have more support than the last time, they’ve proved pretty reliably that they’re willing to turn over (some) control to a democratically elected government. (I have no idea how much control they maintained over Morsi, possibly quite a bit more than the rest of the world thought. Maintaining treaties with Israel was unquestionably not part of Morsi’s plan, at least not his party’s plan.)
Possibly the biggest problem facing the military government is that Egypt is flat broke, with zero foreign credit, no more than a few months of fuel left, and without aid, won’t get anymore. More than 1/3 of the population gets food aid, and food prices have skyrocketed recently because of limited supply. And their water system is falling apart. Sharia law don’t mean shit when there isn’t any food on the table.
