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By: The Egyptian Eagle
I was recently reading up on the great military victory that is the October 6th War. It's interesting to see what kind of story is told outside of Egypt. Several decades of propaganda and simplified story telling have made me believe that the Yom Kippur War was a landslide victory for the Egyptian Army. Then again, the more you think about it, all you see is a montage of missiles firing in the air and troops climbing what seems to be an impenetrable sand wall. I'm sure that the Great Ramadan War, which lasted approximately 16 days, consisted of more than just that.
Indeed, it did. History will actually show that after the initial attack, which caught the Israelis by surprise, the attack began to get sloppy and poorly coordinated. In fact, it reached the point where the Israelis managed to arrange a counter attack and set foot in Africa. To add further insult to the Egyptian victory, the Israelis had broken the Egyptian defense line and were 60 miles away from Cairo. They could have literally waltzed into Cairo undefeated and taken the capital, completely overturning the brief military accomplishment that we took pride in.
Meanwhile in Cairo, all that was being done was a victory parade comparable to that of Roman military parades. Sadat rode in his armored limousine with the top down, completely unafraid of any attempts on his life. This was his hour; he was the hero of the Arab World. He was The Hero of The Crossing. And, of course, who could forget the famous speech that he gave to the Egyptian Parliament, as he boasted proudly about Egypt's new military might.
The only thing that ended a war was a ceasefire backed by the US and the Soviets.
To me, this is just an example of how Egypt today has become a recurring story; we had something good, and when all goes bad, we don't think about how to fix it or how to salvage it - we simply reminisce about how great it was. The Yom Kippur War, as great as it was, was not the crushing defeat that we thought it was. Instead of reminiscing about how Egypt was once the greatest country in the world, why don't we do our best to fix it? We can't simply blame one man for all of Egypt's downfalls. The blame also falls on us, the people who are solely responsible for fixing Egypt.
Egypt has, unfortunately, a long list of blemishes and embarrassing moments in its history. From the numerous terrorist attacks to a crumbling economy, Egypt now has a very poor public image. Please, don't let it be known as the country that was abandoned by its own people.
And that goes for everybody, whether Christian or Muslim, or even Jewish.
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