list.lurker Kragen wrote this piece which is all over my twitter
timeline, and I thought I'd mirror it on silk as well, as it's a good
overview of the events in Egypt so far. Additional thoughts, folks?
Udhay
http://canonical.org/~kragen/egypt-massacre-sotu.html
Why Egypt’s popular rebellion is the greatest historical event in a
decade, and
how Barack Obama missed the boat.
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(Above: No army is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.)
I’m writing this on January 28th, 2011, at 11:53 AM Cairo time,
although I’m an ocean away from Cairo. But, as someone wrote the other
day on Twitter, yesterday, we were all Tunisian; today, we are all
Egyptian, and tomorrow, we will all be free. So today I am writing this
on Cairo time.
Three days ago, I read Barack Obama’s [2]State of the Union address. He
delivered it on the same day that the [3]#Jan25 protests began in
Egypt. I was dismayed that he didn’t mention the protests at all,
because they’re more important than almost everything he did mention.
This essay is an attempt to explain why they are so important, why
Obama ignored them, and what the possible results of that choice could
be.
What Egypt is like
[4][View_from_Cairo_Tower_31march2007_small.jpg]
For readers who don’t know much about Egypt, like most Americans,
here’s my attempt to sum up a country of 80 million people in three
minutes.
Egypt is not a republic, any more than the People’s Republic of China
is. Egypt is a brutal dictatorship, governed by the same dictator since
1981, 29 of those years under state-of-emergency regulations. That
dictator, Hosni Mubarak, was the vice-president of the previous
dictator, Anwar Sadat, who in turn was the vice-president of the
dictator before him, Gamal Abdel Nasser, who had held absolute power
since 1956. Egypt has been under one-party rule since 1952, and
although the ruling party has changed its name several times, it has
never yielded its power.
Egypt has gradually declined in influence and quality of life
throughout Mubarak’s reign.
Some opposition parties are now formally allowed. They currently hold
3% of the Egyptian parliament. All influential opposition parties are
banned, and the press is heavily censored. Mohamed ElBaradei, an
Egyptian who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work fighting nuclear
proliferation, moved to Vienna so that he can find reporters willing to
talk to him.
Egypt is desperately poor. The majority of the country depends on the
bread dole for survival.
Egypt is one of the countries where the US would ship prisoners to have
them beaten, electrocuted, and raped by the Egyptian police for years,
as a means of interrogation. ([5]Abu Omar and [6]Ahmed Osman Saleh are
two of the best-known cases.) Indeed, its reputation for torture was so
well established that it was the first US ally selected for this
“[7]extraordinary rendition” program.
The Egyptian police are famous for their lack of controls. Last year,
[8]Khaled Said was sitting in an internet café; a couple of policemen
came in and demanded to see everyone’s ID, which is against Egyptian
law. He refused, so they dragged him outside, beat him to death, and
dumped his body in the street.
It’s also one of the top recipients of US aid in the world, much of
which is earmarked for the security forces — the same security forces
who are currently beating journalists bloody and shooting protestors
with US-made tear gas, birdshot, and now bullets.
Much of Egypt’s military, the tenth largest in the world and the
largest in Africa, is actually [9]paid for by the US. Egypt produces
US-designed armaments such as the M1 Abrams tank under license. Without
the political and financial support of the US, it is generally believed
in Egypt that the current dictatorship would have fallen decades ago.
As [10]Shahi Hamid said, “If the army ever decides to shoot into a
crowd of unarmed protestors, it will be shooting with hardware provided
by the United States.”
However, as Steven A. Cook of CFR says, all those soldiers “are not
there to project power, but to protect the regime.” He calls the
Egyptian military “the ultimate instrument of political control.” In
other words, all those weapons are bought to be used against Egyptians,
not to protect Egypt.
This is exactly the sort of situation that fosters non-state terrorism:
a disempowered citizenry, kept in check by only the military might of
an unaccountable and corrupt dictator backed by a faraway country,
watching their future being destroyed one year at a time — all so that
that faraway country can have a reliable friend to support political
goals the nation opposes. This country profile fits both Saudi Arabia
and Egypt, as it has for decades. And,
