Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian-born leader of al Qaeda, has seen this movie before: An Islamist party does well at the polling booth only to be overthrown by a military coup that then plunges the country into chaos.
This is what happened in Algeria in 1991. Tens of thousands died in the subsequent Algerian civil war that ripped the nation apart during the 1990s.
The lesson that Zawahiri drew from the Algerian war was that participating in democratic elections was strictly for suckers; far better to seize power through violence and then impose Taliban-style sharia law because "the crusaders" and their allies in the Arab world would never allow the emergence of a true Islamist state.
Now Zawahiri gets to say "I told you so." Earlier this month Zawahiri posted a 15-minute recording on militant websites. In the recording Zawahiri explained that the military coup that deposed Egypt's elected president, Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsy, proved that democracy had failed.
