I’m tired of this bullshit about gradually easing Mubarak out so that he isn’t “humiliated.” The guy is a dictator, and has been for 30 years, propped up by a foreign power and his huge secret police organization. He deserves not only to be humiliated, but to be executed. The idea is that he should get the hell out before the people give him what he deserves. Does he want to save face or save his ass?
The young people who are in the streets today have no patience with all this government protocol and face saving and dignity crap. Stability will come when the goons stop beating and killing people. They want freedom, they want truth, they want honesty, they want an end to corruption and brutality. No, they have no specific demands or well-thought-out program. They are not Muslim extremists. They are Sunni, not Shi’a, like Iran. They simply want the bad guys out of there, not just Mubarak, but his son and his security chief and the whole rotten bunch.
And if the people aren’t as “friendly” to Israel because they haven’t been paid billions to be friendly, like the Mubarak government has been, then we’ll just have to win them over. They’re clearly not stupid. They love the idea of America, if not our past foreign policy. But whatever may happen, one thing I know to be true is that no nation’s security is worth keeping eighty million people suffering under a military dictatorship. Israel can take care of itself. The people of Egypt need our help, and it would be better to be their friend now rather than their enemy later.
I just heard a commentator on MSNBC talking about how difficult it will be to “legally” do anything about getting rid of Mubarak because there are laws in place in Egypt, and the Constitution requires this and that, and the U.S. can’t stop giving them aid because it’s all in the “pipeline” for the next two years, blah, blah, blah. He says he’s a lawyer, and that’s for sure.
Hey, this is a revolution! The Egyptian Constitution needs to be thrown out the window, along with Mubarak and his entire administration. What good is a revolution if you don’t actually overthrow anything or anybody? It’s not a revolution if it has to take place within the framework of the phony baloney structure that was put in place by the dictator. You want the demonstrators to start writing a constitution and arguing over laws? That’s a great way to stop their momentum! The first step is to throw the rascals out. They want democracy, that’s the beginning and end of it, and how that democracy works itself out is just details. First you have to get rid of the tyrant! As long as he’s there, you can’t do anything.
So what if another opportunist takes his place? If he doesn’t mind his manners, the people will go back into the streets and kick him out, too. Eventually, with practice, they’ll get it right. A leader will emerge. But let’s not put the cart before the horse.
The Egyptian people are saying they want a democracy just like we have. Of course, they don’t realize it, but we don’t really have a democracy. We have a fake democracy. Every two years the people get to vote, and they have a choice between three guys: A crook, a bigger crook, and a guy who can’t win because the pundits tell us he can’t. But at least we don’t have an outright dictatorship, and we have freedom of speech, for the time being. All the Egyptians want is their own fake democracy, and ability to say what they want without the secret police showing up in the middle of the night.
But what about the “Muslim Brotherhood”? Oooo, scary! Okay, so they’ll have to fight their own fight against their religious extremists, just like we do in America. They have people who want to exercise power based on the Koran, and we have people who want to exercise power based on the Bible. You can’t prove to me that either group is more frightening than the other. What’s more frightening than the Islamic fundamentalists is the fact that Mubarak was put in power by the West, and has been kept in power by us all these years. Should we be surprised if they’re a little cheesed off at us when this is all over? Now would be a good time to start changing the way we do things, because this isn’t going to be the last democratic revolution in that part of the world. We’d better get used to it.
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