Egypt’s Army, Hardened in Bureaucracy, Not War

The Egyptian army has come forth to save democracy by destroying it. A man in uniform, Abdelfatah al-Seesi, gave himself the right to oust and hold in detention an elected president. Say what you will about the Free Officers who toppled the monarchy in 1952, they had been men of their time. They had known political protest, and they had known war.

Gamal Abdel Nasser had imbibed the political currents of his time. He had fought and fought well in the war for Palestine. He had carried within him the grievance of a military that had been dispatched into a war it wasn’t prepared to fight.