Published in The Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/egypt-has-never-been-a-democracy/2013/07/10/57c13b1e-e7da-11e2-818e-aa29e855f3ab_story.html Letter to the Editor Egypt has never been a democracy Wednesday, July 10, 5:33 PM The July 5 editorial “A response to Egypt” carried the secondary headline “The United States must withhold aid until the military restores democracy.” But how can Egypt’s military “restore” something that was never there? Apparently unbeknown to The Post, Egypt has never had a democracy. Democratically elected and democratically run governments are clearly not the same thing. One merely needs to look next door to Gaza to see how an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood operates. Hamas was democratically elected in its one and only election seven years ago, and there is no semblance of a democracy there. The election was plainly the vehicle for installing a totalitarian regime, which continues to this day. Former Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi showed no signs of heading toward democracy. In his brief tenure, he replaced the heads of TV stations, fired leaders in the military and jailed dissenters, all in what seemed to be an effort to thwart future elections and democracy. If the military now chooses to “initiate” a democracy, it would be the ideal outcome and something that the world waits to see. Michael Berenhaus, Potomac