Congratulations to the Egyptian people.The B.O. administration and the State Department haven't known what to do. Obama got his 3 a.m. call and let the answering service handle it. He didn't know whether to spit or go blind so he closed one eye and drooled. Who's surprised?
There were two "hard choices," neither of them palatable: support Hosni, which meant supporting a bloody-handed dictator; or support the people in the streets and take a chance on the Muslim Brotherhood or ElBaradei, aka Iran's sock puppet. Hosni had jailed or run off all the other credible alternatives.
Public sympathy in the U.S., at least the sympathy of that segment of the public that wasn't watching Entertainment Tonight, was with the people in the streets, even though what comes next is still up in the air. As a nation we'd rather see liberty than dictatorship. Failing liberty, we still like seeing the dictators run out of town.
The talking heads, like the rest of Washington, have been split, seeing the popular support for change but realpolitiking almost out of habit.
No one knows what's coming next in Egypt. Given past experience, it'll probably be bad. But it won't be a continuation of the dictatorship of the past 30 years, which was a continuation of Sadat's dictatorship, which was a continuation of Nasser's dictatorship, which makes it 55 years. It'll be a new bad. Maybe in 30 years this new bad will give way to a new less bad. Or in 55 years.
We've been watching this for better than two weeks, as have the other strongmen in the Arab world. Everyone is wondering "who's next?" My guess would be the loathsome Omar Bashir in Sudan, or Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen. Assad is too firmly entrenched for now, but he's on the list, maybe after Jordan.
And so is the Iranian theocracy on the list, with its annual June demonstrations.
And so is the Tragic Kingdom on the list.
Fred says that no one knows what's coming next in Egypt. I'm no seer, but let me make a prediction.
What's happened in Egypt is a military coup. It is precisely the continuation of Mubarak who sprang from Sadat who sprang from Nasser. It's meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Suleiman will be the front man, but the generals are in charge, pretty much as they were when Hosni was the man. How else could Mubarak have maintained his grip for thirty years?
Suleiman and the junta will make some eye-catching, superficial reforms. They'll do things that play to the people on the street. Some market reforms, some new subsidies of basic consumer goods, and some 'job creation'. They might even be more successful than Obama in creating jobs.
Suleiman and the junta will sponsor elections in September. They'll make a big show of it with international observers and everything. They'll win, of course, and if they're smart they'll take 60 - 65% of the vote rather than the usual 90% that thugs like to get. They'll promote some sort of moderate 'opposition' that will be ineffectual but will look pretty to the Europeans.
All the while they'll identify the biggest threats to their rule and kill them. The leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, the street leaders, the rubes who call themselves 'moderate', today all have cross-hairs on their foreheads. The people hated Mubarak's secret police -- very well, the secret police will get a new name and a new velvet glove for their iron fist. They won't fool the people on the street though they'll likely fool Obama.
Americans indeed like democracy and hate dictators. The average American, however, will tolerate a thug as long as he's 'our' thug. Suleiman will be that man, and he'll continue the grand tradition of thuggery in the Middle East.
I'll take Door #3, for the Muslim Brotherhood takeover. I don't doubt that they are well-organized, and they have been playing the game in Egypt for a long time, and this is the moment they have been preparing for. I expect in the future they will destroy the economy and stone women in the public square. Mubarak was a good guy, he kept his people down and didn't support terrorism, (unlike Saddam, who only followed half of that formula.) We should have done everything possible to help keep him in power.