"Islamic State Launches Deadly Attack Near Cairo" Topic

"Four gunmen killed eight police officers dressed in plainclothes south of Cairo on Sunday, authorities said.

The officers were traveling in a government minivan and conducting security checks in Helwan district when they were attacked, the Egyptian Interior Ministry said in a statement.

The gunmen shot and killed all of the officers before escaping, the statement said.

ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement posted by a supporter of the terror group.

It described the attackers as a "security unit of the caliphate soldiers" and said they have safely returned to their positions…"
Full article here
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Amicalement
Armand

And the surprise is ?

No surprice… only bad news my friend… (smile)

Amicalement
Armand

As usual … for many places in that region …

While this loss of life is tragic and the extra-judicial killing of anyone is absolutely wrong, we should keep in mind that many Egyptians and some foreigners have been disappeared or killed and their bodies dumped by men strongly suspected of being plain-clothes police or interior ministry agents who have snatched their victims in dawn raids. There is mounting evidence that government backed death squads are hard at work in Egypt since the overthrow of the elected government. What were these eight policemen doing in the van in the wee hours of the morning? This is something which should be investigated as thoroughly as finding who killed them and why they were murdered.

This is what comes of overthrowing a democratically elected government by force of arms and using a stacked judicial system to lend a veneer of legitimacy to the liquidation of hundreds of opposition members whose only crime was winning an election. Such behaviour is only proving to zealous radicals and moderate reformers alike that peaceful means and civil society cannot be used to change a country's course in the transnational oligarchy of power which has wrapped itself like a lethal web around a struggling globe.

Oppression and brutality begats violence and insurgency. These eight dead may have been honest and innocent victims of a vicious assassination or there may be more to the story than meets the eye. Whatever the case may be, perhaps their deaths can be a reminder that regime change through force of arms should always be avoided and discredited. Military might should not be a domestic political tool.

Rod Robertson.

Military might should not be a domestic political tool.

I don't even know what that means. Military might is what defends political activities. Military might overthrows political opposition. Military and political machinations are incapable of separation. Not even in the US are they separated.

The trouble in the Middle East is the intermixing of Western political forms and ancient governmental traditions, which are the very opposite of democratic. So an elected gov't under the aegis of the US/UN incites opposition. And this is not going to change. Every time "we" oversee an elected gov't anywhere in that part of the world it is going to attract, invite, radical response….

Great War Ace:

Some clarification.

The military should not be a tool to impose a political leadership on an unwilling population in place of a legally elected and mandated government. Abusive elected governments should be removed by political or legal means. The use of the military in a state against the state's own citizens in order to remove a legally mandated government only proves to those who might be inclined to use violence that violence is the only option which will work. This radicalizes reformers and radicals alike and begins a trend away from representative government and towards tyranny. This also drives an opposition underground and towards insurgency rather than legal political participation. The likely result of this trend is the brutalization of the populace by both the most radical insurgents and an authoritarian regime.

The leaders and the military must view, as their highest duty, the protection and maintenance of the constitution of the state before all else. The maintenance of peace, order and good governance is the British tradition, but the decision of what is good governance must be left to the electorate, not the military, not would-be rulers and not powerful foreign interests. To do otherwise will destabilize the state further and could very well lead to revolts, revolution and bloody civil unrest.

Cheers.
Rod Robertson

Modern war gaming is the continuation of politics by other means.

+1 Marduk !