Thanassis Cambanis: For Egypt's Revolutionaries, History Offers Discouraging Lessons

Thanassis Cambanis is the author of A Privilege to Die: Inside Hezbollah's Legions and Their Endless War Against Israel. He contributes regularly to The New York Times and The Boston Globe, where he is a columnist, and blogs regularly at thanassiscambanis.com.

It only requires a quick glance at the new Egyptian junta -- as most of the country's citizens see it -- to understand how the military rulers see their inviolable position. On its Facebook page, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces issues terse directives. Egyptian citizens post comments by the tens of the thousands, but there's never any response. The military's high-handed public outreach is similarly one-sided. One general appears on television to read the same directives, stony-faced, to a camera. And every now and again, the military stages public "dialogues," which come across, intentionally or not, as patronizing lectures....

The times of wide-open transition, when anything seemed possible, have been few and far between. Egyptian colonels revolted against British rule and were crushed in 1882. After World War One, there was a flash when liberal government appeared a distinct possibility, but again, Britain and the Egyptian royal family conspired against it. Arguably, the last time before the present day when Egypt entertained the possibility of representative rule was in 1952, when Gamal Abdel Nasser's Free Officers deposed the king and promised a prosperous, democratic "Egypt for Egyptians."

Historian Afaf Lutfi Al-Sayyid Marsot, in her short History of Egypt: From the Arab Conquest to the Present tells a depressing tale of the nearly constant "alienation of the population of Egypt from their rulers." Her capsule recounting of Nasser's rise to power and disastrous rule carry an unmistakable warning for Egyptians today, especially those who trust the military's probity or competence....