The idea of Mubarak's thugs riding into the Cairo demonstrations on camels and brandishing whips against peaceful protesters should be one of the indelible images of 2011. The old world trying in vain to contain what is happening under their feet.
Hosni Mubarak shut down the internet about 10 years too late. When he finally tried to shut it down, too many channels between the man on the street in Egypt and the rest of the world had been opened and in operation for the momentum to be halted.
Whatever happens next, it's done. He's out. Even if he was successful in clearing the streets by force, it will only come back, and next time it may not be as peaceful.
He shouldn't take it personally. Mubarak is just caught in a wave. And it's a wave that isn't going to abate any time soon.
It's not a wave that started in Tunisia. It started on Facebook.
Globally, people have gone online and they have seen what they don't have. They have experienced access, which is only going to mean that they are going to get harder and harder to control. Pretty hard to keep 'em down on the farm after they've had Facebook friends in 14 countries.
In finding the power to communicate, they seem to have also had one very big realization, one that we may not like to admit -- that no one ever said that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were the rights of Americans. Even Mr. Jefferson said these were the rights of man, not the rights of US citizens. And just as those rights and inherent freedoms sound true to us, they sound true to Egyptians. And Tunisians. Jordanians. And a whole lot of other young people online right now.
Just try to put that genie back in the bottle. It's going to take a lot more than horses and camels. It would take winding the clock backward.
Even the fight against extremism is moving onto a new playing field. It could be in our favor. Contrary to Mubarak's spin, the Egyptians in the square in Cairo are a serious force for freedom. They don't seem so apt to let themselves be put under Sharia law anytime soon.
Where does this leave the US? "We believe the Mubarak regime is stable" looked clueless a week after it was uttered by Secretary Clinton. But it's forgivable. We were all a bit clueless when this thing started.
What's rising before us now, in the halls of the White House, and I believe in our own homes, is even more important. It is the realization that people KNOW.
Someone said once that they knew the Soviet Union would fall when they found out people were watching "Dallas" in Russia. Well today they're watching a lot more than Dallas, and it's way beyond Russia. And they're not just watching. They're talking.
If we really want this momentum to work in favor of democracy, we had better wake up to the fact that, around the world, they know what we -- the ones who are supposed to be the shining example of democracy -- are doing in Egypt, minute to minute. The guy selling tea on the corner in Cairo knows. So does the woman in Jordan. And the teenager in Indonesia. The Cluetrain Manifesto has gone global.
They also know that we sold off their rights along the way by propping up oppressive regimes to protect our own corporate and geopolitical interests.
If we stand back and let Mubarak's thugs injure these protesters and burn the country's antiquities, without leveraging every possible ounce of pressure we can against Mubarak, starting with immediately withdrawing aid, they will know it. And they will never forget it.
We have a stroke of luck here with Egypt. We have a chance to get on the right side of history on this one, by finding a way to throw some weight behind Mohamed ElBaradei. The Nobel Peace Prize winner in the middle of the crowd. With the megaphone.
I interviewed El Baradei for TheCommunity.com last August, on Egypt, Iran, and the Muslim world. I encourage you to read it, or reread it, for some insight on this central figure.
This is a sane man. He is not just an Egyptian and a Muslim, he has operated with and in the West, and successfully -- he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work as the head of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency. He is a moderate and a diplomat.
He understands the US, the good and the bad. He taught international law at New York University. He led the UN weapons inspectors in Iraq, who determined before the US invasion that there were no weapons of mass destruction. He told the UN Security Council that the documents showing that Saddam Hussein was trying to buy uranium from Niger were fakes. In response, the Bush administration tapped his phone and tried unsuccessfully to push him out of the IAEA. He came away from the IAEA and back to Egypt with a broad, informed view, having been immersed in diplomacy for 12 years at IAEA.
At the time of our interview, he talked about what was brewing at home. "The Middle East," he said, "is in a state of disconnect with the rest of the world right now. The people are living with mistrust and anger as they feel they are treated with double standards by the West, and at the same time marginalized or repressed by their own governments."
Little did we know the strength of what he was looking at.
His solutions are broad, but in line with the growing momentum:
We have to decide, if we are going to have a security system based on Euro-Atlantic interests, or on global solidarity. A system based on the global interest of the human family is the only way to go. Unless you grant everyone the same rights and freedoms, you cannot talk peace. You can only talk who has the biggest club. And the biggest club is a nuclear weapon.
ElBaradei has the traits of the best of the Nobel Laureates. He believes in the common man. He believes that people are good. He's an optimist. Empowered, he could change the conversation not just in Egypt, but in the entire Middle East.
We will be doing well if these events turn in his direction, if the protest survives long enough for him to be brought in to start structuring the new Egyptian government. No he is not someone who will be in our back pocket. But he is someone we could legitimately partner with and support to usher in a new day of democracy in the the country. He can communicate with the man on the street. Not just in Egypt, but across the Muslim world.
How to do it is a question to be answered in Washington, D.C. But if the twists and turns of events in Cairo favor it, there's a window here, a chance.
He is the one to watch.
Follow Mary Wald on Twitter: www.twitter.com/marywald
The most important thing to know about Egypt is how poor and weak it is. Once that is firmly in mind, it becomes more than evident that the US could end this in 5 seconds - Obama need only go on TV and announce that all aid to Egypt is halted until the regime hands over power. The military would toss out the thugs immediately, if not sooner.
Anyway, you're right about everything else. It is the economy that caused this riot, not social media or Wikileaks or any other conspiratorial medium.
"Even as the Egyptian opposition to beleaguered President Hosni Mubarak is rallying around Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei, a top spokesman on foreign affairs for the American Jewish community has derided ElBaradei as a "stooge of Iran."
Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and one of the most influential Jewish voices in the United States, said ElBaradei covered up evidence of Iran's nuclear weapons program while he was head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog."
http://www.politicsdaily.com/2011/01/31/egypts-mohamed-elbaradei-a-stooge-says-american-jewish-leade/
The WH should send some high level people into the square as protection for the masses. We actually DO, as in no other country, have the leverage to pull this off in Egypt. It's always darkest just before dawn. This is not the time to cower. Please hear me, Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton. Fail these people, and history will never forgive you.
"Si ponemos en la balanza los aciertos y desaciertos en torno a los ganadores del Premio Nobel de la Paz, tenemos que galardonados de la talla de Albert Schweitzer, Martin Luther King, Madre Teresa de Calcuta, Lech Walesa o Nelson Mandela despertaron una adhesión casi unánime en la opinión pública, en contraposición con las nominaciones de figuras más controvertidas como Theodore Roosevelt (defensor del imperialismo), Andrei Sakharov (padre de la bomba H rusa), Henry Kissinger y Le Duc Tho (diplomáticos de potencias beligerantes en Vietnam), Anuar Sadat (que atacó a Israel en 1973 para forzar las negociaciones), Menahem Beguin (que invadió Líbano aprovechándose de la paz con Egipto), Yasser Arafat (líder terrorista en otra época) y Jimmy Carter (crítico de la política de EE.UU. en Irak).
"El Premio Nobel de la Paz otorgado a Mohamed El Baradei y a su Organismo Internacional para la Energía Atómica también ha sido bastante polémico, en vista de las fricciones que ha tenido este funcionario respecto de la cuestionada dependencia de la ONU con las potencias occidentales... Sin embargo, al final hubo que darle la razón a la OIEA, pues las mismas tropas de ocupación no encontraron evidencias concluyentes sobre el supuesto programa nuclear de Hussein. Con este solo hecho bastó para que la balanza se inclinara a favor de El Baradei, escogido de entre 199 candidatos al Nobel, una critica velada a la apresurada invasión de Irak".
["ElBaradei: The Opportunity"]
or ElBaradei: the opportunist??
Where was he, and what was his real meaningfulness
specifically as relates to Egypt these last 30 years??
For most of his life, he and his family have lived and worked outside of Egypt.
(although he made an appearance in Egypt a few years ago,
hopefully as potential opposition candidate to Mubarak;
but stating pre-conditions that would have to be met before he would consider running)
No question that ElBaradei is a very intelligent and competent person.
He has great name recognition and is well respected everywhere
as a truly exceptional diplomat on the World Stage---
to the point that Egypt might well ask whether it would be Egypt's interests
that he would be serving against pressures exerted by the non-Arab world.
It would be far more appropriate if the person
who assumes the reins of power succeeding Mubarak
would be a person whose life is centered in Egypt;
who has devoted his life specifically to the welfare of Egypt;
who is familiar with the local intricacies of its governance.
(Perhaps someone from of the Kifaya movement
that has openly been campaining for democracy
and has been challenging Mubarak for years??)
What is needed is a political counterpart person having the lifelong,
day by day love and dedication that Zahi Hawass
has shown for the cultural heritage of Egypt .
.