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On July 3, Egypt's military carried out a coup, albeit one that was applauded by millions of Egyptians. With the democratically elected Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood ejected from office after less than a year on the job, the probability of a more violent and chaotic Egypt jumped exponentially that day. 

And that is what unfolded, coming to a head yesterday. Yet for most of the past month and a half the Obama administration, led by Secretary John Kerry's State Department, tied itself into knots to avoid calling the military takeover a coup. It insisted that Army chief Gen. Abdel Fatah al-Sisi's appointment of technocrats and former officials of the Hosni Mubarak dictatorship were evidence of civilian control.

Consider what Mr. Kerry told Hamid Mir of Pakistan's GeoTV on a visit to that country way back on Aug. 1.

"The military was asked to intervene by millions and millions of people, all of whom were afraid of a descendance into chaos, into violence. And the military did not take over, to the best of our judgment so – so far. To run the country, there’s a civilian government. In effect, they were restoring democracy."

At this point Mir interjects: "By killing people on the roads?" Kerry responds:

"Oh, no. That’s not restoring democracy, and we’re very, very concerned about, very concerned about that. And I’ve had direct conversations with President Mansour, with Vice President ElBaradei, with Gen. al-Sisi, as have other members of our government. And I’ve talked to the Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy, so I’ve been in touch with all of the players there. And we have made it clear that that is absolutely unacceptable, it cannot happen."

Yet it just did, in far greater numbers than on July 3. Egypt is closer to, not farther from, chaos after the past month, and further from a democracy than at any point since the day before Mr. Mubarak was toppled in February 2011. With 525 people killed in the past two days and more than 3,500 wounded after security forces broke up pro-Muslim Brotherhood protests and Brotherhood supporters staged reprisal attacks, people are wondering if the military is going to try to engineer a return to the status quo that prevailed before Mubarak was removed from power in February 2011.

Steven Cook, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of "The Struggle for Egypt: From Nasser to Tahrir Square," wonders if the military was ever interested in letting go. He writes in Foreign Policy this morning:

Kerry appears to be belatedly shifting his tone on what's happening in Egypt, while perhaps still misunderstanding the Egyptian military's intentions. In a statement last night, he said:

Does the Egyptian military really want to allow a "transition to an inclusive civilian government?" With the crackdown of the past two days, arrests of more senior Muslim Brotherhood members, and what appears to be an intent to wipe Egypt's Islamist politicians from the scene, we have good reasons to doubt that.