"Wasn't funding $1.3 billion to the Egyptian military essentially backing their coup and crackdown on what were initially peaceful protestors?"

I don't think they were peaceful.

"Now that protestors are arming themselves, becoming violent, can't it be said that by funding the Egyptian military the US is essentially breeding a new generation of terrorism?"

So the MB is terrorist? Guess we better shoot them then.
Guess you're either for us or against us.

I like how America was wrong to repress the peaceloving terrorists before they blew up the world, and now we're at fault for opposing active terrorists

poor Raschid the terrorist wanted to be a dentist, but 'merica paid a general to tear down his school

so he had no choice but burn down churches

dam u merica! daaaaaaaaam uuuuuuuuuuuuu

if you scare the tourists away with strict religious rule, Egypt will go down, not become stronger.

"Thats what your media/source information told you."
20 years ago, so long before all this happened I learned about tourism being Egypt main source of income in school. It hasn't changed much now has it?

"why funding coup there? Why don't let them down because their own rules? Why?"
I was merely arguing about Egypt becoming stronger under MB. I did not defend the shootings.

I condemn both parties in fact for the same reason: being undemocratic.

14% agriculture
38% industry
47% services

in 2008 tourism was good for at least $11 billion directly. It could have been doubled by now in better circumstances. Indirectly it creates profit as well like eg in public relations. Over 12% works in tourism that makes more then 1 out of 10!

Next to that, it seems like you justify MB's behavior with wrongdoings from the military. President Morsi gave the military every opportunity to become violent by making undemocratic laws. It was all they need to commit violence.

If you have had a more democratic leader as head of the MB, who was more moderate, over 90% of the people would have been supporting him. The army wouldn't dare to do anything then.

Instead he frightened a large part of the population by making himself pharaoh. The huge protests against his behavior are not part of a military plot... many of them voted Morsi!

btw, the slaughter of Egypt's military is all over the news here.

In our world, it is democratic to ignore the results of pretty much every election on the planet.

In my opinion, to take such a vote seriously would be anti-democratic, on many levels, and so, no, it wouldn't be anti-democratic to ignore the results of such a vote.

In my opinion, whether or not something is democratic or anti-democratic does not rest upon whether or not a population voted on something (even in the astronomically implausible event that actually 100% of that population voted).

Whether or not something is democratic, in my opinion, rests on whether or not the process, action, and impact accorded to the humanitarian values inherent to democracy.

As an example, the trial and execution of Socrates was an undemocratic act of tyranny antithetical to democracy, even though it was purportedly committed according to the 'democratic' will of the majority of the citizens.

Contemporary society has plenty of examples of processes, specific actions, and impacts which are 'anti-democratic', even though they are purportedly supported by the majority will of the voting public.

Take this website, this game. 

How was this game created; how is it run?  More akin to a dictatorship or technocracy rather than a democracy?  Does playing the game foster a humanitarian ethos inherent to democracy or one more anti-democratic?  Is the impact of the game, then, that which fosters a humanitarian ethos inherent to democracy in the outside, real-life world, or, again, does it foster an impact more akin to anti-democratic principles?

Okay, perfect.  So we're on the same page.  Though I do admit, we must admit at least some irony to the sentiment that in order to preserve the fundamentals of a democratic society, an aspect that at first looks entirely democratic (the right to vote) must be overruled.  It looks like a compromise.  It feels like a compromise.  Don't get me wrong, I agree with you here.  However, it illustrates a point: you can't examine aspects of a democracy in a vacuum.  You have to take the larger context in consideration.

With regards to Egypt, here's the issue, though.  What happens when, at the time of the vote, the people didn't realize the vote was a vote to eliminate elections?

The military was well aware that at the time of the first elections that the only non-Mubarak political organization in Egypt was the Muslim Brotherhood, a known Islamist organization.  The fundamental fear was that if the Muslim Brotherhood won the election, a transition to an Iran-esque government would ensue (where even if a democratic process existed, a non-democratic legal system would take priority).

And there was at least one REALLY good example of just that:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/25/world … egypt.html

"CAIRO — Egyptian judges rebelled Saturday against an edict by President Mohamed Morsi exempting his decrees from judicial review until ratification of a constitution, denouncing it as a bid for unchecked power and calling for a judges’ strike.

The condemnation came from an array of organizations. The Supreme Council of the Judiciary called the decree “an unprecedented attack on judicial independence” and urged the president to rescind it. A major association of judges, the Judges Club, called for a strike by courts across Egypt. The leader of the national lawyers’ association endorsed the call."

So yes, the election in question was exactly what you said would be undemocratic.  It involved a situation in which one choice involved across-the-board removal of fundamental rights inherent in a democracy.

However, even if you don't like that argument, there's a VERY strong secondary point to say that the military coup is democracy in action.  I know, this argument sounds ridiculous stupid, but you'll have to hear me out!  Very brief recap of Egyptian politics the past few years:

Mubarak sits in power.  Egypt has significant economic and other difficulties.  People en masse protest Mubarak's rule.  Mubarak is overthrown.

New government comes to power.  A year goes by, and the economy has, if anything, worsened.  People en masse protest AGAIN!  And, once again, the military kicks the guy out.

Notice the pattern?  Neither coup involved a military spontaneously saying "screw it, let's axe this guy!"  They both only occurred after protests gaining worldwide notoriety.  Gee...  national government only conducting major political actions after a massive portion of the population demands change in the direction taken.  That sounds ridiculously democratic, even without the formality of a vote.

Granted, a new election would have been preferred, but that's impractical.  First, it would have required government sanction to fund and conduct.  Guess who controls government.  Yep, that's right... the guy everyone wanted to oust. 

Second, they take time... time Egypt didn't have.  Their problems involve pretty big crises, primarily economic.

http://www.dw.de/egypt-gripped-by-unemp … a-16825597
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/egypt/unemployment-rate
(First link is a nice simple article, second is just unemployment data)

...13% unemployment, investors ditching a country dependent on foreign investment, and central bank reserves of dollars being cut in half just to work on stabilizing the currency... that's not something a people can just deal with until an election.

And before you say "they're just looking for a good front man," they had one!  Mubarak and the military were working together for 20 years!  How many marriages last even half that long?  In an issue of civil-military relations, the civil side rarely has the ability to prevent the military from pushing the politician aside and taking over, which is  why the most successful dictators first generally try to eliminate any possible military opponents (think Stalin) or give the military concessions to ensure loyalty (North Korea's policy of giving the military food supplies first).  So if the military actually wanted to seize power... that would have been the easiest thing ever.

Third, a hypothetical question!  Which do you think would be more bloody?

A: The current situation
B: One in which the people, frustrated with a government unwilling to cede power and a military unwilling to intervene politically again, were forced to take matters into their own hands?

I don't have to endorse every action of a government to recognize if they're trying to do the right thing or not.  I can endorse efforts by the military to conduct a democratic transition, favoring a President NOT interested in removing checks and balances, while at the same time condemning individual actions conducted.  Moreover, I'm willing to bet that since the US and Egyptian military have had good relations since Egypt and Israel signed their peace treaty, it's much easier for the US to negotiate with the Egyptian military from a position of friendship than to destroy 20 years of relations over actions being conducted in what are obviously dire circumstances in the nation's history.

Finally, a general political note.  How do you expect the US to exert change in another society toward a more democratic society without recognizing that transition periods are shitty?  Remember, the US transition to our modern democracy involved decades of slavery, an utterly brutal civil war, and a follow-on period during which a large segment of the population was outright discouraged from voting through various political processes, or through outright voter intimidation via the Klu Klux Klan.  France's transition to democracy involved the outright execution of a royal family, resulting in the establishment of a ruler who declared himself emperor and proceeded to ransack Europe.  Germany's transition to democracy was halted with the Reichstag fire, allowing one political party to seize power and begin one of the darkest eras in human history.

The point is, democracy is a complicated process.  Just telling 20 million people "Hey, you have the right to vote now" doesn't do any good.  Democracy isn't a thing you put on or take off.  Structurally, it requires a number of policies, such as freedom of the press, to make it work (case in point: Russia has elections, sure.  However, the government controls the airwaves, so no opposition candidate's going to get the time of day for advertising).

More important, democracy's a mindset.  It's an understanding of many things by the people.  For example, democracy requires an understanding by the party in power that, following loss during an election, it's better to give up power to the rightful victor, reorganize, and wait for the next opportunity to win, than it is to hold on to power and continue working toward the goals in question.  Most Western citizens tend to take the act of giving up political power for granted.  Outside democracies, it's almost unheard of for a government official to say "Hey, I realize none of you like me, so I'm going to go home and play golf now, despite the fact that I control the military and could easily quash you all!"

A mindset isn't an easy thing for any people to just adopt, particularly when that mindset runs counter to centuries of history.  Remember, for the US to overcome a fundamental hurdle in ensuring all the people of its nation had the right to vote, the US had to kill 72,000 people in its own civil war, culminating in an endgame where the military burned entire towns controlled by the opposition wherever they went, followed by an occupation of the southern half of the country by the military.

Long story short, you can't expect the Egyptian government to instantly become a democratic paradise.  That's naive.  It's going to take time, not just to stabilize Egypt, but to establish the institutions, political organizations, rights, and understandings inherent in a democratic society.  There are absolutely going to be hurdles, and times where the government will screw up.  This is probably one of them.  However, that in itself isn't a reason to dismiss the transition outright.  Rather, it's an opportunity to use the democratic system the nation is trying to foster, and the relations it has built as a result, to ensure that such occurrences don't happen again.

@The Great Eye

Your response answered my question.  The US is still funding the Egyptian military because it thinks it is supporting democracy.  Thank you. We may now close the thread, unless, of course, we want to analyze whether or not the US's motive in funding the Egyptian military is in fact supporting democracy rather than some sort of ulterior motive.

Basically, your argument would hold water if there weren't plenty of examples of the US not supporting / undermining democratic reforms that strayed beyond the prevue of what the US considered in their best interest.   Case in point, Okinawa, Japan:

http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/archi … kinawa.htm