Egypt, The beginning.
Finally it blew, ever since our trip to, ‘The Land of the Pharaohs’ I have been waiting for its people to rise up against Hosni Mobarak. He and his repressive family have clung to power and clogged the halls of government for thirty years and as a result the average income for a days work for some of the best educated people in the Middle East has been two dollars a day. Bribery to some family member bureaucrat to do any kind of business has been the enforced order of the day. I don’t know how the people have been able to stand it this long. If it’s not a family member it’s been a dues paying appointee of a family member that runs every facet of government. The extensive family even lives in a huge, exclusive, well guarded compound, well away from the average citizen. The family has been heavy handed over the years retaining power and repressing dissent. Too heavy handed.
Tour guides, of which we had six, over the course of our stay, spoke in low-checking-behind-their-backs voices about the conditions of everyday life. Guides see people from other countries enjoying and speaking about basic freedoms that Egyptians only dream about. Travel is out unless you are rich and can afford the permit to travel. Buying a laptop, a phone, a business, a car, a motorcycle, a decent paying job, almost everything is done by paying the bureaucrats bribes or 'fees'. It’s better known as corruption. It’s been sucking the soul out of the country.
Egypt’s outlawed Muslim Brotherhood has always been just under the surface waiting to jump in, recruit, and be a new radical form of government if and when Mobarak is pushed aside. Are they pro USA or not is anybodies guess. My guess is the people of Egypt are smart enough to push for a new secular, democratic form of government that allows capitalism and opportunity to flourish will succeed. That will not be the radical Muslim Brotherhood.
The United States has paid Egypt and Mobarak more than a billion a year in aid mainly to keep the peace and not use it’s Army against Israel or its own people, and so far he hasn’t. That is until today, his army is in the streets, so I guess all bets are off when it comes to giving him more aid and support.
The average age of most people in the Middle East is under thirty, they are restless and want what everybody wants and Iraq now has, freedom and opportunity. Who maybe next to riot? Iran, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Syria are certainly candidates. Anywhere there is repression there opportunity for revolution. What fills the revolutionary vacuum after the Kings and repressive governments are toppled? Who is the next Castro, or Ayatollah? Let's hope not.The United States and every other nation wants, above all else, stability with-in governments so that commerce can go on peacefully between nations with out upsetting world markets.
Many in the Muslim world will blame the United States for supporting Mobarack all these years with out understanding our one motoviation, stability in the region. Mobarak offered it at a one billion dollar a year price tag.
