That’s the news that’s coming out of Egypt this morning, that President Hosni Mubarak will step down down in advance of large protests expected for tomorrow, and that the military will step in to maintain order. Both military and ruling party leaders have reportedly told the crowd in Tahrir Square that “all your demands will be met.”

If true these developments should hearten leaders of America’s own democracy movement, so teabaggers take heed: if your cause is just and the people are with you, take to the streets and the tyrant Obama will fall!

UPDATE: Via NPR, CIA Director Leon Panetta told a Senate committee this morning that there is a “strong likelihood” Mubarak will step down today.

UPDATE, UPDATE: Not much new information on Al Jazeera English at the moment that you can’t get from the BBC and elsewhere, but you gotta watch their live stream from Tahrir Square for a few minutes, just to get a sense of the excitement.

12 replies on “Mubarak Out?”

  1. Is it good news that the military is playing hero, stepping in to more overtly control Egypt? A dismal piece in Foreign Affairs last week said this exact situation was the end game of Mubarak’s big speech, guaranteeing the next “elected” president will be military.

  4. This would appear to be the answer to everybody’s prayers in Egypt. I’m not over there, so I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but presumably they know better than I do.

  6. Hola, gus! Yes, you’re right, I remember that article you linked to, and now this from the NYT today:

    “Officials in Mr. Mubarak’s government have been warning for several days that protesters faced a choice between negotiating in earnest with the government on Constitutional changes or having the military step in to guard against a descend into political chaos.”

    Nice non choice…

    On a lighter note, go see Michael K’s take today on Anderson’s dust up…

  7. Aw, Canuck, that Coop blurb is priceless: “face down in the steam room at a David Barton gym…”

    Back to the awfulness, though: I dug up that Foreign Affairs prediction of today’s events, by Naval Postgraduate School professor Robert Springborg, whom I hope is somehow wrong:

    The opposition, largely cognizant of the dirty game being played against it, nevertheless has had little choice but to call for protection against the regime’s thugs by the regime itself, ie, the military. And so Mubarak begins to show us just how clever and experienced he truly is. The game is, thus, more or less over.

    The threat to the military’s control of the Egyptian political system is passing. Millions of demonstrators in the street have not broken the chain of command over which President Mubarak presides. Paradoxically the popular uprising has even ensured that the presidential succession will not only be engineered by the military, but that an officer will succeed Mubarak. The only possible civilian candidate, Gamal Mubarak, has been chased into exile, thereby clearing the path for the new vice president, Gen. Omar Suleiman.

    http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2…

  11. Hah, gus! I remember AC saying this: “Going gray early in life is like premature ejaculation: You’ve heard about it, you just never think it’ll happen to you.”

  12. Looks like we’re “giving” him somewhere around 2-3 billion of the 20-30 billion in US tax dollars he stole over the years to go to Dubai.

    The more you steal, the more you get to keep as a reward for going away.

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