Cathy Barnes: Yes, I think the Arab spring failed. Egypt just exchanged one ruthless dictator for another.
Ole Tangen Jr.: Would you rather live under tyranny or anarchy?
Tim Squire: The Arab Spring, a dismal failure, created a Muslim Winter! It set Islamists on a course to oppress their moderate neighbors, incite sectarian violence, and persecute Christians. For its new-technology organizing, it could not even poorly govern. Anyone supposing it "hasn't failed" is wearing rose-colored glasses, or blinders.
John Kilcommons: The Muslim Brotherhood, long the world’s most politically astute, patient, and disciplined Islamist movement, overplayed its hand so badly in Egypt… At the end of the day, instituting sharia was more important to [former President Mohamed] Morsi and his fellow Brothers than feeding the Egyptian people or making even the slightest attempt at jumpstarting the Egyptian economy …. This is who the Brothers are, after all: committed ideological fanatics. What is surprising is that they made it so obvious, so soon.
…. What do Egyptians want? In February 2011, as [former President Hosni] Mubarak was being overthrown, we were told by a giddy mainstream media and the Obama administration that Egyptians were sick of tyranny and hungry for democracy and freedom. Then, when given the chance, the Egyptian people turned around and elected an overwhelmingly Islamist parliament and a Muslim Brotherhood president and voted “yes” on a new constitution that sought to enshrine sharia law.
Then, after just one year of an Islamist project that a majority of Egyptians voted for, three million people flooded Tahrir Square and precipitated a military coup against those same Islamists. What comes next is anyone’s guess. But I have a nasty hunch that it won’t be Jeffersonian democracy.
Nancy Vickery Clark: Same old hate-fueled Gordian knot.
