NY Times on Egypt Army

In general, I’ve found the Times fairly alarmist since February, but we’ve now gotten to the point where alarmism coincides with reality:

“CAIRO — Egypt’s military rulers are moving to assert and extend their own power so broadly that a growing number of lawyers and activists are questioning their willingness to ultimately submit to civilian authority.”

I’m questioning their willingness too.

It could get to the point of a second Revolution, I suppose. But last Sunday we saw a taste of what that would look like. In the first Revolution the Army could behave at least nominally like neutral bystanders jumping in at the last minute to give the People what they wanted. (Though it was always more than a bit of a game.)

A second Revolution would, by definition, be directly against the Army itself, and then we would see whether they would really fire on their own people or not. They did it last Sunday, in small numbers against a relatively powerless minority, which was scary enough. But what would the Army do if hundreds of thousands were spurred to return to the streets by some incident or by general frustration?