Robert Fisk: The wrong Mubarak quits. Soon the right one will go

[Jefferson23]

Protesters in Tahrir Square are right to be sceptical despite the apparent shake-up in Egypt's ruling party

The old man is going. The resignation last night of the leadership of the ruling Egyptian National Democratic Party – including Hosni Mubarak's son Gamal – will not appease those who want to claw the President down. But they will get their blood. The whole vast edifice of power which the NDP represented in Egypt is now a mere shell, a propaganda poster with nothing behind it.


The sight of Mubarak's delusory new Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq telling Egyptians yesterday that things were "returning to normal" was enough to prove to the protesters in Tahrir Square – 12 days into their mass demand for the exile of the man who has ruled the country for 30 years – that the regime was made of cardboard. When the head of the army's central command personally pleaded with the tens of thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators in the square to go home, they simply howled him down.

In his novel The Autumn of the Patriarch, Gabriel Garcia Marquez outlines the behaviour of a dictator under threat and his psychology of total denial. In his glory days, the autocrat believes he is a national hero. Faced with rebellion, he blames "foreign hands" and "hidden agendas" for this inexplicable revolt against his benevolent but absolute rule. Those fomenting the insurrection are "used and manipulated by foreign powers who hate our country". Then – and here I use a precis of Marquez by the great Egyptian author Alaa Al-Aswany – "the dictator tries to test the limits of the engine, by doing everything except what he should do. He becomes dangerous. After that, he agrees to do anything they want him to do. Then he goes away".

Hosni Mubarak of Egypt appears to be on the cusp of stage four – the final departure. For 30 years he was the "national hero" – participant in the 1973 war, former head of the Egyptian air force, natural successor to Gamal Abdel Nasser as well as Anwar Sadat – and then, faced with his people's increasing fury at his dictatorial rule, his police state and his torturers and the corruption of his regime, he blamed the dark shadow of the country's fictional enemies (al-Qa'ida, the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Jazeera, CNN, America). We may just have passed the dangerous phase.

remainder: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-the-wrong-mubarak-quits-soon-the-right-one-will-go-2205852.html

[tularetom]

1. The good news - hosni Mubarak is leaving

The bad news - he's being replaced by his son - Hosni W Mubarak

[rhett o rick]

2. Better news would be that the thugs stop killing activists. nm

[Peace Patriot]

3. Robert Fisk is the most reliable commenter on the Middle East.

And he clearly fears the success of a U.S. plan to install another bloody dictator in Egypt.

I'm sure this is no surprise to anyone who even superficially follows U.S. policy in the world but it does help to clarify everyone's suspicions. We've become so inured to U.S. government secrecy that we hardly expect to know for sure what our government is up to, anywhere--what its policy really is, what its real objectives are and whose interests U.S. policy is serving. Fisk is one of those very, very rare journalists who helps readers understand what is really going on, beyond just guessing.

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The demonstrators in Cairo and Alexandria and Port Said, of course, are nonetheless entering a period of great fear. Their "Day of Departure" on Friday – predicated on the idea that if they really believed Mubarak would leave last week, he would somehow follow the will of the people – turned yesterday into the "Day of Disillusion". They are now constructing a committee of economists, intellectuals, "honest" politicians to negotiate with Vice-President Omar Suleiman – without apparently realising that Suleiman is the next safe-pair-of-hands general to be approved by the Americans, that Suleiman is a ruthless man who will not hesitate to use the same state security police as Mubarak relied upon to eliminate the state's enemies in Tahrir Square. --Robert Fisk

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It occurs to me that one of the few times that the U.S. has put its nuclear arsenal on alert was over control of the Suez Canal back in the mid-1950s (--a complicated fracas involving England, France and Israel attacking Egypt over its nationalization of the Suez Canal, and the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. as wary allies in trying to stop this war; nukes would not likely have been used but still, the USAF/nuke capability was being readied). The U.S. has a HUGE stake in controlling Egypt. We should never forget this in reading about/observing the current democracy revolution under way in Egypt.

[Jefferson23]

4. Fisk, one of those rare journalists...absolutely agreed! n/t