- Egyptians would be lucky if their new ruling generals turn out to be in the mold of Chile's Augusto Pinochet, who took power amid chaos but hired free-market reformers and midwifed a transition to democracy.
It bothers me that this is at best, thrown together just to make the WSJ look bad. While the wsj could have been a little more tactful in delivering the pinochet argument, its general intentions seem very clear. Egypt needs a strong military leader that will clamp down, but with a view towards transition. It very obviously opposes a military take over like the one demonstrated by the military after Mubarak, and only mentions Pinochet at the end of the article as a demonstration of military rule that eventually turned out to be positive for the country.
The Guardian at its most bitter. That said, I read the WSJ article expecting the quote to be out of context, and it's not. This paragraph, seemed almost to suggest that they were linking the words 'enlightened' and 'Pinochet' -- but read the article and draw your own conclusions.[Egypt] will do so again without more enlightened leadership that focuses on economic revival and a political transition to a system of checks and balances. Any transition government will no doubt seek money and oil from the Gulf states as well as an early deal with the International Monetary Fund to make up for Egypt's rapidly declining currency reserves.