After 16 days, protests continue despite vice president Suleiman’s insistence that the government will not tolerate them being prolonged.
Meanwhile, behind the scenes, a group of political and business leaders dubbed The Wise Men are meeting with government officials to urge Mubarak to step down and Suleiman to lead the transition into reform and new elections, but to no avail, Al Jazeera reports.
After a weekend of mixed messages from various agents working on behalf of the Obama administration, the U.S. Congress is clear: It’s not considering cutting off aid at this point.
And my friend on the ground in Cairo describes a markedly different scene than the one in the capital city even just a week ago. She has gone back to work. She delivers medical supplies and is working with filmmakers to preserve footage of the protests, but for the most part she doesn’t join the sit-ins. She prefers playing an active role to sitting-in, but says the continuing sit-ins are absolutely necessary. I asked her whether she trusts that Mubarak will enact reform in the end. “if we keep existing in the streets and ask for his leaving, yes,” she wrote. “if we stopped now, he wont. he will b even worse.”
I, for one, am having a tough time feeling optimistic about the way this story is developing.
@1, you mean optimistic like in Iran? No, of course, the thugs will win, and win easily once they take the gloves off. A thousand or two dead and everything will return to the way it was. For now.
It is absolutely clear to everyone now that the US government — Democrat and Republican, now and forever — is on the wrong side of history. Obama is afraid to back up his own words. It is painfully clear to everyone in the Middle East that “freedom” is just a word to us, and we have no desire or intention to see actual freedom happen.
Which is incredibly short-sighted. Egypt is a pressure cooker, and the lid’s about to blow whether we like it or not. We’re on the side of just sitting back and hoping that Mubarak lid stays on, him or someone just like him. But it’s going to blow off, and when it does we will have missed a perfect opportunity — the opportunity of a MILLENNIUM — to be a model for the contents.
Instead, they will turn to extremists, or worse.
Of course, they were probably going to turn to extremists at first anyways, but THAT’S A RISK WE HAVE TO TAKE. There are no other options. But extremists who are grateful to the US for showing them that we back up the future Obama spoke of in his famous speech. Instead, he’s proven that those were just words, and we think the Mubaraks of the world can stay forever. They cannot.
Instead, the model they see is the Iraq War. The WSJ and other outlets are still pushing the line that it was Bush’s war that pointed the way to freedom, not Obama’s speech, but there isn’t a single person in the Middle East, even in the Iraq government, who believes that. And now, with Obama’s turnaway, they don’t believe ANYTHING we say, ever, on any subject at all.
Mubarak out now.
oh come on, this is still happening faster than when the Wall fell or Tunisia.
we’re actually a bit ahead of the schedule in Tunisia, but you didn’t see that cause it wasn’t on US TV/MSM at the early parts.
3 comments?
I rest my case.
@2. thank you.
@5, no thank you.