Arseholes think strategy, professionals think tactics
With respect to the "arseholes theory of authoritarian governance", see the detailed guide to arraying your troops and arseholes. Jamies point about control of the streets is very well made - people are coming up with all sorts of theories about why the Egyptian troops didn't use violence to drive the protestors away, but these don't seem to be generalising to Yemen or Bahrain, whereas the simple explanation (that they didn't because they couldn't) does.
What about the theory that since the Egyptian Army runs around 50% of the economy, they had more to gain from a peaceful transition than extreme violence that went either way?
ReplyDeleteI saw in the NYT that supporters (hooligans? is that a slur against the Irish?) of Cairo's rival football teams were fighting on the side of the protesters. Score a point for the greater asshole theory of democratic transitions.
ReplyDeleteOne imaginative solution is to import arseholes from abroad and put them in uniform, thus reducing their planning horizon to the existence of the regime that hired them.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/17/bahrain-security-forces-sunni-foreign
"all sorts of theories ... these don't seem to be generalising to Yemen or Bahrain, whereas the simple explanation (that they didn't because they couldn't) does."
ReplyDeleteHow is that simpler than "In Bahrain and Yemen the army and police are willing to shoot people, but in Egypt they are not"?
AB provided a good reason why that might be the case. The Egyptian universal draft is another.
I just don't think that gunning down large numbers of unarmed people on the streets of a city has been demonstrated to be outside the core competency of military and paramilitary forces. Generally when they set their mind to it they've done a pretty good job of that.