The military will always be one of the greatest hurdles for the establishment and growth of democracy. It is irrelevant if the nations are Muslim or Middle Eastern, the dominance of the military and its role in destroying the nation it is sworn to protect is the overarching storyline through out world history. A government chosen by the people has no place for the ambitions of military men. It is then natural to expect an entity, that would only see its influence diminish under a real democracy, fight tooth and nail against any substantive change.
The Egyptian military exists as an extension of a bygone era. A present entity taking advantage of the respect its predecessors earned in bloody conflicts of the past. Egyptian problems are far more local in nature today. Domestic issues that require local law enforcement and wider infrastructural development, not soldiers in tanks. Were democracy to become entrenched within the Egyptian state, the military would find itself increasingly sidetracked by the needs of the people. Of course, as far as the military is concerned, how dare the needs of the Egyptian people take precedence over the military? There in lies the problem faced by most nations with a rich military tradition. When threatened, the military begins to take advantage of that reservoir of sympathy and respect and does so while reaching for its own goals, at the expense of the people.
For democracy to flourish, the military power has to be kept in check. Of course, a military which exists to protect its people will enjoy greater support than an elected leader who has to make hard decisions with limited resources. For that matter, if I stood on the sidelines and criticized Egyptian leadership, I would find my popularity increase too. The point is, it will take many years to fix the mess Egypt finds itself in and these problems will not disappear without pain and sacrifice. Concurrently the nation will need all that time to gain a grasp of what democracy means. A chance to learn what they want from their leaders and what qualifies one to be a leader. There will be bad leaders, terrible maybe, but the beauty of true democracy is that those leaders will never come into power again and stand as a vivid example of the type of figure the Egyptians will never elect again. For all this to happen, the military cannot be allowed to repeatedly take control by playing on the sympathy of the Egyptian people. A military dictator is forever, civilian incompetence is temporary. It is up to the Egyptians to decide what they prefer.
