The scenes from Cairo and other Egyptian cities are too macabre to see, let alone ponder on what they mean for the dead and their families.

Seen from our insular point of view while we enjoy our summer and our festas, the Cairo scenes are too violent to look at and their implications too worrying to consider.

It was only a short time ago that an entire nation came together to confront President Mubarak and his army and ended the president’s rule, to the point that he is now facing trial.

Then elections came which were won by the Muslim Brotherhood, which is not as extreme as the Salafis, but which equally insisted on the Sharia and which did not look likely to relinquish power.

Then people came out on the streets and the army emerged from its barracks, arrested President Morsi and installed a government led by a general who had displaced the Muslim Brotherhood in a coup that was cheered by many.

But the Muslim Brotherhood quickly switched from being incompetent in government back to opposition and victimhood. Crowds of Brotherhood supporters took to the squares and vowed they would not be moved.

On Wednesday, armed police, backed by helicopters in the skies and bulldozers on the streets, stormed thousands of the Brothers’ supporters encamped beside a mosque and a university in Cairo. Hundreds were killed and nearly 3,000 injured and the violence spread to other cities, including Alexandria and Suez. The violence continued yesterday.

The military government now argues it used the ‘utmost restraint’ to remove the protesters, but the use of deadly force against its own people was anything but restrained: it was brutal and reckless. The country is now on the verge of a civil war.

The spectre of Algeria looms: the army there prevented Islamists from taking office after they won the first round of an election in 1991, and as many as 200,000 died in the decade-long bloodbath that ensued.

Intransigence on one side is being met by intransigence on the other. The Morsi government was incompetent and the economic situation of the country continued to deteriorate. More, that government, originally supported by around a quarter of the electorate, then tried to rule on its own and railroaded its hardline stance on issues such as a new constitution and Sharia law.

But that does not excuse the generals—for either the coup or this bloodshed. The coup was not only wrong, it was also a tactical mistake. The Brothers would probably have lost any election handily; and if they had refused to hold a vote, then the people would have risen up.

The army’s violence since then has been disastrous. When it shot scores of people on July 8th, it may have been encouraged to do more from the tepid Western response: that it could get away with it.

In fact violence has served to unite Egypt’s various Islamist factions—some of which had previously rejected the Brothers almost as keenly as secular Egyptians did. The Brothers’ incompetence and abuse of power is now disappearing under a mantle of injustice and suffering.

This bulldozing of the protesters is a basic misunderstanding of the whole import of the Tahrir Square uprising against Mubarak. Then, ordinary people, citizens not engaged in any political formation came together in the most extensive Arab Spring revolution to sweep away Mubarak and his power. They showed how much they hated being bossed around by petty officials and ruled by corrupt autocrats. They rejected the apparatus of a police state. Instead they wanted better lives, decent jobs and some basic freedoms.

When the people came together just a few weeks back to protest against Morsi they expressed more or less the same sentiments as expressed when they toppled Mubarak plus this time their clear statement that Morsi had taken the wrong turning.

But the generals must realize that Egypt’s Islamists, in their reduced state, probably still make up 30% or so of the population. The generals cannot suppress them without also depriving millions of other Egyptians of the freedoms that they crave—and which they have tasted, however briefly, since the overthrow of Mr Mubarak.

Henceforth jihadists, in Egypt and beyond, who sympathise with al-Qaeda will find a more willing audience when they preach, as well as a supply of newly radicalised recruits. Likewise, each Islamist challenge will strengthen those in the army arguing for further suppression.

It is difficult, at this stage, to predict what will happen after all these deaths which are continuing as we write. The world is coming together to protest against this carnage but it is difficult to see either the army going back to its barracks or the protesters slinking away.

Certainly, life has never been cheaper in the land of the Pharoahs.