Egypt considers dissolving Muslim Brotherhood

[karynnj]

14. I don't know if they were used in the sense that the military pushed them to protest

From all I've read, they protested for the same reasons they protested Mubarak. They did not like what the government is doing.

I suspect that you are right in that the military has used their millions in the streets to regain any lost power. One question is whether they have always been the strongest power there. Mubarak fell because they refused to support him. When you think about that, it is chilling how angry the Egyptian upper and middle class were with Mubarak that they took this to mean they were moving to a freer type of government. (intentionally not using the word democracy as that could just be western bias).

One real question is whether the military ever really relinquished power. Is it possible that what we saw with all the protests and lost of life was really at heart the military shedding two puppet governments - Mubarak and Morsi?

I don't see how you declare the party that won the last three elections (Morsi himself, the Constitution, and Parliament) illegal. It would be like declaring the Democratic or Republican party illegal here. In doing so, you are immediately denying them the ability to win at the ballot box. What avenues does that leave? There is no way that this could result in either a stable peaceful state -even under a strong man or even less a western style democracy.