What worries me most is that if Obama gets exactly what he wants, which is another vile and brutal dictatorship in Egypt, the Egyptian people as well as the people of Palestine will suffer even more oppression than they did under Mubarak's rule. You don't have to be a foreign policy wonk to know that this will cause even more anti-American sentiment to flare up throughout the Muslim world, which will eventually sow the seeds for another major terrorist attack against the US.

Surely Obama is aware of this. Surely he is aware that by continuing to prop up a dictatorship in Egypt, especially a dictatorship that aids and abets the fascist state of Israel to oppress the people of Palestine, will eventually force the US to fatten up its national security apparatus to the point where American democracy becomes a mere skeleton of its former self. I'm beginning to think that's exactly what Obama wants to do the US. And what better way to do this as well as to enrich the American oligarchs and destroy America's middle class than to pattern the US after the fascist state of Israel.

Posted by: Cynthia | Feb 9 2011 19:44 utc | 1

Excellent points, b. I believe Suleiman has been a fox in torturer's clothing all along. In order for him to hold onto power, legally, for any length of time, the country must be put under Martial Law and the Constitution suspended indefinitely. Remember, according to the Egyptian Constitution, if Mubarak is permanently deposed, Suleiman is not the successor, and even if elections are held in sixty days, and Mubarak is temporarily deposed with Suleiman appointed his temporary successor, Suleiman cannot run for President once elections are held according to the current Constitution because he has not belonged to a Political Party for the past five years. He's precluded....yet he's Israel's and the U.S.'s pick. Something has to give for that to happen in a perceived legitimate fashion, and that something is increased violence and chaos requiring a crack down in the form of Martial Law as mentioned above. And here, Suleiman even says so himself. The cards are there, if you look closely enough and wade past the obfuscation.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110209/ap_on_bi_ge/ml_egypt

Showing growing impatience with the rejection, Suleiman issued a sharp warning that raised the prospect of a renewed crackdown. He told Egyptian newspaper editors late Tuesday that there could be a "coup" unless demonstrators agree to enter negotiations. Further deepening skepticism of his intentions, he suggested Egypt was not ready for democracy and said a government-formed panel of judges, dominated by Mubarak loyalists, would push ahead with recommending its own constitutional amendments to be put to a referendum.

"He is threatening to impose martial law, which means everybody in the square will be smashed," said Abdul-Rahman Samir, a spokesman for a coalition of the five main youth groups behind protests in Cairo's Tahrir Square. "But what would he do with the rest of the 70 million Egyptians who will follow us afterward."

Posted by: Morocco Bama | Feb 9 2011 19:50 utc | 2

I'm flummoxed... Egypt has been under Martial Law since 1981, after Sada was assassinated. It is usually referred to as a State of Emergency... someone please explain to me the difference in the Police State/State of Emergency Egypt is presently under and has been for some time, and "Martial Law"

Posted by: crone | Feb 9 2011 20:21 utc | 3

Martial law? I agree that is probably what they are planning. But it's way too late for that. The government is reacting to the crisis of 2 weeks ago. Martial law might have worked then. But now what do you have? The interior ministry police is gone. Either broken and demoralized from losing the battles of Jan 25-29, or many have deserted and joined the protesters.

It isn't enough for a windbag in an Armani to show up on TV and say "martial law." They need someone to go out and shoot people. Lots of people. If they had that, they would have done it by now. The escalation of the protests makes it HARDER to shoot people, not easier.

Nevertheless, just because something is a stupid idea, does not mean it wont be done. These people will hold on tooth and nail to their privileges for as long as the can. They will try every dirty trick in the book. Mubarak and his inner circle will be of the attitude that of we can't have Egypt then no one can. And so they will burn the country down.

That does not mean there is no hope. Not Every General has the option of fleeing the country. Some will be stuck inside. And if they sense the revolution is unstoppable, then they will start to figure out that if they end up on the loosing side, they will be hanging from a rope in the middle of Tahrir. All while Mubarak and his closest friends fly in Gulf streams to Saudi or wherever.

That is when the army's cohesion and discipline will begin to crumble. In a sense, it may be a blessing in disguise that Mubarak did not leave at the beginning. The longer he stays, the harder it will be for the rest of the regime to save itself.

That said, the economic condition in Egypt is simply dreadful. It has always been a country living paycheck to paycheck. Even a brief interruption of tourist revenue and business can have catastrophic effects. Also, Egypt which used to be a small oil exporter, will soon need to import oil. It will soon reach a situation where Egypt will not be able to import enough wheat.

Posted by: Lysander | Feb 9 2011 20:26 utc | 4

@Lysander - That said, the economic condition in Egypt is simply dreadful.

I do not see that. Egypt has a very lucrative position with the Suez Channel. The economically "optimal price" for passage would be asked - it isn't today - it would ramp up income quite a bit. Instead of importing oil, why not use the gas that goes at subsidized prices to Israel and Jordan today?

Then take away the military ownership of fertile land and spread it to small business farmers. Instead of exporting strawberries to Europe and using that income to import wheat from the U.S., produce the wheat yourself on the strawberry fields?

In a halfway fair social-democratic democracy Egypt would be able to feed all its people and grow enough to do so.

The big, huge, problem is how to get there under military rule when the military also has major economic instead of national interests.

Posted by: b | Feb 9 2011 20:48 utc | 5

b, I agree Egypt has potential, and your suggestions are excellent ones. But all that takes time. In the meantime, I worry about a serious cash crunch and possibly a dangerously low food supply. I hope I'm wrong.

I'm no agronomist, but I think your point about strawberries is especially germane as I imagine it is a water intensive plant as opposed to wheat.

Posted by: Lysander | Feb 9 2011 20:57 utc | 6

Australia's Sydney Morning Herald has a story on the breakdown of law and order last week.

"EGYPTIAN police received direct orders from the then interior minister, Habib al-Adly, to leave their posts on Saturday, January 29, following the ''day of rage'' in which democracy supporters occupied Tahrir Square.

''We were mainly concerned about our jobs, getting food, so that is why we followed the orders,'' the policeman said."

Oversimplifications about police and citizens don't neccessarily apply. The average egyptian policeman may not be a nice fellow, but he has more in common with the working class who according to union activist Hossam El-Hamalawy joined the revolution in an organised way today. many individuals from the proletariat participated in the demonstrations from Day1 now the unions are pressuring the regime solidarity with all working egyptians including police is a problem Solieman won't manage.

The pig who talked to the Australian reporter comes from the same town as Mubarak who had kept his popularity up despite tough times and not pork barreling, by playing the working class hero. That is not cutting it now.
Solieman's crude threats have upset his US handler Joe Biden. Joe might have worked out the amount of violence required to stop this revolution is more than he and the corporate sock puppet in charge want to be associated with.

The penny has dropped in england.
The Guardian
"There's a growing sense tonight that – with new cabinet appointees resigning, strikes multiplying, state media employees walking out and street protests maintaining their momentum – Egypt's government is fragmenting fast, particularly as their 'negotiations' strategy is rapidly unravelling (more details of this in tomorrow's Guardian).

As further evidence, it's just emerged that some prominent Egyptian companies are running adverts in tomorrow's local newspapers explicitly distancing themselves from the Mubarak regime"

Posted by: Paradise Mislaid | Feb 9 2011 21:07 utc | 7

But the regime still has an alternative to a military crackdown that migh incite a coup. It can reignite terror in the streets with the secret civil part of its rule, the Interior Ministry.

Not sure, apart from sporadic violence by a few dead enders, that the Interior Ministry is in any shape to mount a serious crackdown right now, after shooting its wad on the night of the camel riders, when it bussed in every thug it could find and still failed to clear the square.

Since then, Ministry forces really haven't mounted any sort of sustained resistance to the protests apart from a few roving gangs on the periphery. Indeed, after the loss at the barricades, Suleiman gave an interview in which he claimed he needed 70 days for 'Constitutional reforms', which, given the good General's clear antipathy toward any reform whatsoever, I interpret as him simply trying to buy time to rebuild his shattered security apparatus. This is also in line with Mubarak's recent announcement of a raise in government worker salaries which would begin, not coincidentally IMO, around the same time these 'reforms' are allegedly supposed to take place.

Could be wrong, but it appears for the moment that Egyptian internal security forces are still licking their woulds from the beating they took that Wednesday night. Two months from now, however, they may not still be so cowed.

Posted by: Night Owl | Feb 9 2011 21:21 utc | 8

Omar Suleiman is not Darth Vader; and Mubarak is not The Master, and both of them are old men. It looks like their days of treating Egyptians as their subjects are over. The Liberation uprising that began in Tahrir Square, in Alexandria, in Suez, has matured as a revolution; and now all over Egypt it is bringing allies from the labor unions and other sectors of society into the struggle. Suleiman threatens; and his eyebrows furrow with the distilled evil of "dark bats of the night". The bats have had their 30 years already; and now it will be the people, rather, who smoke them out of the belfries, and not the other way around.

Is it really Suleiman who controls the army? Certainly Suleiman controls the bats who have ruled the night. But when push comes to shove, it is probably untenable for a country, being liberated by its people, to suffer a General Staff that owns 10% to 15% of Egypt's economy. A reality check and a gut check, a check of essential patriotism is needed. The generals will have to cough up these holdings, and be given a dignified pension on which to retire--or alternatively--face justice. The threat Suleiman makes is either a bluff to maximize the financial holdings of the top officers and elites, and to give up little or no power, or it is the overreaching of these very bad men that will bring them to no good end.

With the organization of the people arising, the power of state sponsored terror is slipping away. Every day the people grow stronger in their resolve. A desperate gamble by Mubarak's would-be successor, to order the army to enforce martial law, to order them to open fire on civilians, to task the army, and the army alone, with sweeping away every vestige of civilian cloth and control, would be an act of madness. To make the army create some hideous junta is simply not going to work. Eygpt will not be subdued this way. The determined people of this revolution will not allow it.

Posted by: Copeland | Feb 9 2011 22:36 utc | 9

Thank you Copeland... I move between hope and despair. Your reasoning is much appreciated.

Posted by: crone | Feb 9 2011 23:07 utc | 10

Copeland - from your lips to the ears of Allah.

Posted by: mistah charley, ph.d. | Feb 10 2011 0:03 utc | 11

Every day the people grow stronger in their resolve.

yep copeland , this is what i'm reading too.

Posted by: annie | Feb 10 2011 0:16 utc | 12

I am awed by the tenacity and will of the Egyptian people, and their numbers and support are growing, but we all know that power will not be relinquished without great cost. There will be much blood and suffering, I'm afraid, and even if the Egyptian people manage to overcome that, Israel and the Coalition of the Willing are not about to let an Egypt that isn't under their purvey take root. I don't know what that would entail....but it certainly won't be pretty, and it's precisely why I've been saying that the people of Egypt...Tunisia, Algeria, Yemen and the world over can't do it alone. It must become a World Revolution for total success to be realized.

Posted by: Morocco Bama | Feb 10 2011 0:31 utc | 13

Those looking with sympathy upon this struggle want the Egyptian people to succeed. Egyptians have been generous and peaceful, and even fierce, when they have had to be fierce. They have already shown us the best qualities that arise during a revolution. They have to rally themselves to brave acts, to creative acts, just to reclaim their own human rights. I also hope that no force comes from outside Egypt to turn what they hope to realize into ashes and grief. But for now I believe that what they hope to achieve is in their grasp.

And thanks to crone, mistah charley, and annie, for kind words.

I wonder if we will come ourselves to some struggle that will cause us understand the Egyptians better than we do now. "To understand our own mortality is to sympathize better with everyone",

I think that's from Euripides.

Posted by: Copeland | Feb 10 2011 1:19 utc | 14

While reading Joshua Stacher's article, I was reminded of old debates here at MOA between Slothrop and rememberinggiap. To quote r'giap regarding Slothrop's arguments: "it's as if the people didn't even exist!" I realize this article was written 2 days ago, but one look at twitter and one could see the large protest being planned/expected and it came as predicted by the people. The most towards referencing the protesters in the entire article was this quote by Statcher "With the protesters caught between regime-engineered violence and regime-manufactured safety, the cabinet generals remained firmly in control of the situation." Not an active compliment to the protesters for sure. Yet, this wasn't enough, even the non-protesting public appeared to be marginalized by Statcher:

The generals that now man the cabinet also sought to wage a war on the non-protesting population, and they did so without firing a single shot. As the state framed the demonstrators as troublemakers, non-protesting Egyptians experienced the uprising's effects. Banks have been closed since January 27, ATMs have been emptied of their cash, and the prices of food and staples have slowly risen at a time when school is cancelled, offices are closed, and curfews are in effect. Similarly, the Internet and cellular networks were shut off and have been patchy at best since their return.
Although some of these citizens may have sympathized with the protesters initially, their mood appears to be shifting. People are tired of being cooped up in their apartments, made anxious as their stockpiles of food and money decrease, and they are ready for a sense of "normalcy" to return. Ironically, the normalcy they pine for resembles the police state so many tried to banish just thirteen days ago. This method of wearing down the non-protesting public seems just as strategic as the violence employed on those airing their grievances in the streets.

Time and time again, I see the people of Egypt, especially the youth, being underestimated, almost to insignificance. Not entirely off topic but here is a
link to a youtube video with Bill Maher and Mona Eltahawy from yesterday. No doubt Maher believes he is one of the leaders of the political left/liberal American intellectuals, and his arrogance and disrespect for these Egyptian protesters and the Egyptian people in general, is clearly displayed in this video.

One last comment on Statcher's article. The main point of his article is that Mubarak's military is firmly in control of events. It is obviously true that there has not been a military coup against Mubarak or his VP at the time of his writing, but whether or not the military is fully in control of events is something the lead protesters would know far better than Statcher.

Posted by: Rick | Feb 10 2011 1:45 utc | 15

As I stated in another thread, what we are seeing in Egypt.....Tunisia, Yemen and Algeria, and soon all over the world, are perturbations emanating from a culture of dominance that has run its course. It was quite an inglorious run, ten thousand years, give or take a couple of thousand.

Perhaps these perturbations are the start of The Turning. I surely hope so, that's what my heart says and wants, but my intellect says that it's mathematically improbable considering the overwhelming odds and the fierce trajectory of all things vested.

I stand by my assertion that it will take all of us, as fellow humans, to make this right. Here's a link to an excellent documentary that speaks to it much more comprehensively and eloquently than I could ever dare.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2em1x2j9-o&feature=player_embedded

Posted by: Morocco Bama | Feb 10 2011 3:13 utc | 16

rick@ 15

the maher revealing but no surprises - as his attitude to the arab people has been articulated before but in this little video - we see it in all its vulgar glory. & citing a pew result as a 'fact' - we wouldn't piss on pew

& from those intellectuals in france who'll drop the term anti semite at a drop of a hat in defence of the state of israel - well now they are curiously silent - le monde calls it the silence of the intellectuals & all the little fuckers who were wetting their willies defending the invasion of iraq are revealed in their maher like distrust of the arab masses

when the rest of the world sees wonder - they see worry

when the rest of the world saw only horror in the invasions if afghanistan & iraq - they only saw redemption

that kind of intellectual is not an intellectual, not even an ideologue, but propagandists

& yes you are right for them the people do not exist not only in egypt & tunisia but in the rest of the world like the fascists they are so close to really, fundamentally, they hate the people, the crowd, the mob

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Feb 10 2011 3:27 utc | 17

This is sounding more and more like Honduras all the time. A coup to preserve the status quo! Of course, the US and Israel would be horrified, just horrified, I tell you.

But then, as in Honduras, the US would continue to shower the coup regime with aid and, after a proper time, even request that the coup regime be accepted by the international community--But only, of course, after the opposition had been brutally exterminated.

And, unlike John Kerry, who was for the Iraq war before he was against it, Obama will be for the coup regime after he was against it. But who's paying enough attention to notice such details?

Posted by: JohnH | Feb 10 2011 4:56 utc | 18

Senior US Marine Says "Multiple Platoons" Are Headed To Egypt

http://www.businessinsider.com/senior-us-marine-says-multiple-platoons-are-headed-to-egypt-2011-2#ixzz1DXAlodrQ

Posted by: Eureka Springs | Feb 10 2011 6:16 utc | 19

The army has been caught out torturing the people

"The Egyptian military has secretly detained hundreds and possibly thousands of suspected government opponents since mass protests against President Hosni Mubarak began, and at least some of these detainees have been tortured, according to testimony gathered by the Guardian.

The Guardian has spoken to detainees who say they have suffered extensive beatings and other abuses at the hands of the military in what appears to be an organised campaign of intimidation. Human rights groups have documented the use of electric shocks on some of those held by the army."

and scaring the foreign media by torturing egyptians in front of foreign reporters.
"The sickening, rapid click-click-clicking of the electrocuting device sounded like an angry rattlesnake as it passed within inches of my face. Then came a scream of agony, followed by a pitiful whimpering from the handcuffed, blindfolded victim as the force of the shock propelled him across the floor.

I had "disappeared", along with countless Egyptians, inside the bowels of the Mukhabarat, President Hosni Mubarak's vast security-intelligence apparatus and an organisation headed, until recently, by his vice-president and former intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, the man trusted to negotiate an "orderly transition" to democratic rule."

Posted by: Paradise Mislaid | Feb 10 2011 6:34 utc | 20

The Egyptian army has started deploying in force through Cairo as a deterrent for tomorrow, likely, large demonstrations. It seems likely that the first confrontation between the army and anti-regime protesters will happen tomorrow or through the weekend.

Posted by: ThePaper | Feb 10 2011 9:07 utc | 21

Another Egyptian police van runs over protesters but is overpowered and tipped over

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Feb 10 2011 9:08 utc | 22

Soleiman will be able to get some of the army, the professional regiments, and elites such as the paras and special forces to help for a time, but thge conscript army will be much less reliable, and once it becomes apparent as it must, that neither Mubarak nor Solieman can raise sufficient loyalists to control the protestors, defections from the elite and professional regiments will move from a trickle to a cataract.
No one wants to be on the losing side when the likely winners are muttering dark thoughts about hearings into the army's involvement in crimes against the citizens of egypt.

Posted by: Paradise Mislaid | Feb 10 2011 10:05 utc | 23

Oh my. I was wandering when they were going to trot out this trope. You just knew it was coming. It will be used to justify sending in the Marines to bring stability and normalcy.

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Qaida+Iraq+calls+Egypt+protesters+wage+jihad/4250048/story.html

WASHINGTON - Al-Qaida-front group The Islamic State of Iraq has called on Egyptian protesters to wage jihad and push for the establishment of a government based on Islamic law, the U.S.-based SITE monitoring service said Tuesday.

The statement, which appears to be the first reaction of any group affiliated with al-Qaida to the ongoing protests in Egypt, was issued on jihadist forums on February 8, according to the U.S. group.

The message, addressed to the protesters, says that the "market of jihad" has opened in Egypt and "the doors of martyrdom have opened," and every able-bodied man must participate.

The group urged Egyptians to ignore the "ignorant deceiving ways" of secularism, democracy, and "rotten pagan nationalism."

Couple this with what Eureka Springs posted above, and it fits with what I said earlier in the thread. Also, this from an Egyptian woman on thread at another forum:

FWIW, I live not too far from a large (secret) military base that is almost certainly American. Last night there was a lot of helicopter activity. This morning we have fighter jets flying loudly over our homes. The last time it was so noisy around here was when the Americans were invading Iraq.

Where are they going? What are they supposed to do when they get there?

Posted by: Morocco Bama | Feb 10 2011 12:22 utc | 24

SITE sits just next with Debka on credibility and a clear anti-muslim agenda.

Posted by: ThePaper | Feb 10 2011 13:03 utc | 25

Fisk at his best: Hypocrisy is exposed by the wind of change

Gone With the Wind might have recommended itself to the State Department if they really must pilfer Hollywood for their failure to adopt moral values in the Middle East – we've ended up with the presidential "now-means-yesterday", and "orderly transition", which translates: no violence while ex-air force General Mubarak is put out to graze so that ex-intelligence General Suleiman can take over the regime on behalf of America and Israel.

Fox News has already told its viewers in America that the Muslim Brotherhood – about the "softest" of Islamist groups in the Middle East – is behind the brave men and women who have dared to resist the state security police, while the mass of French "intellectuals" (the quotation marks are essential for poseurs like Bernard-Henri Lévy have turned, in Le Monde's imperishable headline, into "the intelligentsia of silence".

And we all know why. Alain Finkelstein talks about his "admiration" for the democrats but also the need for "vigilance" - and this is surely a low point for any 'philosophe' – "because today we know above all that we don't know how everything is going to turn out." This almost Rumsfeldian quotation is gilded by Lévy's own preposterous line that "it is essential to take into account the complexity of the situation". Oddly enough that is exactly what the Israelis always say when some misguided Westerner suggests that Israel should stop stealing Arab land in the West Bank for its colonists.
...
So when the Arabs want dignity and self-respect, when they cry out for the very future which Obama outlined in his famous – now, I suppose, infamous – Cairo speech of June 2009, we show them disrespect and casuistry. Instead of welcoming democratic demands, we treat them as a disaster.

Meanwhile even AP is waking up to the fact that there was an internal coup:

Analysis: Egypt military in power grab amid unrest

The military, already the country's most powerful institution, has taken advantage of the unrest to solidify its authority, using a combination of force and public relations to deliver what amounts to a soft coup in a country where it is widely viewed as the ultimate guarantor of national interests.
...
"Any successor to Mubarak who does not enjoy the support of the senior military brass will be actively undermined and thwarted by the generals," said Augustus Richard Norton, a Middle East expert from Boston University.
...
Taking advantage of the political vacuum created by the massive demonstrations, the military swiftly moved to settle old scores with two main rival groups. One consists of the mogul businessmen-politicians who have over the past decade rallied around Mubarak's powerful son Gamal to dominate society, causing friction with the military's own economic interests.

The second is Mubarak's ruling National Democratic Party, in which the younger Mubarak rapidly rose through the ranks to become its de facto leader.

Nurtured by the two Mubaraks, these two groups have risen to such a position of power in recent years that they posed a credible threat to the military's longtime domination, according to the analysts and a senior NDP official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

AlJazeera still does not get this. It still speaks of the military in fawning ways. Wonder when they will wake up.

Posted by: b | Feb 10 2011 14:07 utc | 26

Here is a theme which can/should be expanded...

"Western leaders should be quaking in their boots."

Having rescued him from would-be assassins, Suleiman is, in effect, Mubarak's bodyguard. His other distinction, documented in Jane Mayer's investigative book The Dark Side, is as supervisor of US "rendition flights" to Egypt, where people are tortured by order of the CIA. When President Obama was asked in 2009 if he regarded Mubarak as authoritarian, his swift reply was "no". He called him a peacemaker, echoing that other great liberal tribune, Tony Blair, to whom Mubarak is "a force for good".

The grisly Suleiman is now the peacemaker and force for good, the man of "compromise" who will oversee the "gradual transition" and "diffuse the protests". This attempt to suffocate the Egyptian revolt will depend on a substantial number of people, from businessmen to journalists to petty officials, who have provided the dictatorship's apparatus. In one sense, they mirror those in the western liberal class who backed Obama's "change you can believe in" and Blair's equally bogus "political Cinema­scope" (Henry Porter in the Guardian, 1995). No matter how different they appear, both groups are the domesticated backers and beneficiaries of the status quo.
...
The uprising in Egypt has discredited every western media stereotype about the Arabs. The courage, determination, eloquence and grace of those in Liberation Square contrast with "our" specious fear-mongering, with its al-Qaeda and Iran bogeys and iron-clad assumptions of the "moral leadership of the west". It is not surprising that the recent source of truth about the imperial abuse of the Middle East, WikiLeaks, is itself subjected to craven and petty abuse in those self-congratulating newspapers that set the limits of elite liberal debate on both sides of the Atlantic. Perhaps they are worried. Public awareness is rising and bypassing them.

In Washington and London, the regimes are fragile and barely democratic. Having long burned down societies abroad, they are now doing something similar at home, with lies and without a mandate. To their victims, the resistance in Liberation Square must seem an inspiration. "We won't stop," said a young Egyptian woman on TV. "We won't go home." Try kettling a million people in the centre of London, bent on civil disobedience, and try imagining it could not happen.

Posted by: Rick | Feb 10 2011 14:22 utc | 27