
Originally Posted by
nickomang
best coverage is on al Jazeera (frankly it's one of the few unbiased sources of real journalism left)
english.aljazeera.net
but, yeah, james is spot on about "imagine if president bush had tried to suspend elections..." basically hosni mubarak has been in power for 30 years and having watched similar uprisings in yemen and tunisia the egyptian people took to the streets to demand he step down and democratic elections be held. the "pro-government" forces that have violently clashed with the protesters (because the military refused to respond with force) were paid by the mubarak government. in other words, they're not mubarak supporters but rather hired guns. now they're trying to remove journalists from the country which suggests, sadly, that mubarak is planning a response that he doesn't want the world to see... scary stuff. i'm proud of the people of egypt and terribly worried about the fate that may await them. then again the uprising could be a success. hard to tell at this point. mubarak has dismissed his government and said he wouldn't run again in the next "election" but that's different from stepping down which is what is being demanded now. in other words, they are relatively minor concessions that may be simply a means for him to buy time while he figures out how to crush the uprising.
please correct me if i've gotten any of this wrong.
I think you're pretty much spot on.
I think the reason we've seen so much caution from the U.S. govt in how they're portraying this and talking about it is because we don't have a very good reputation around the world for helping out with democracies. We have a tendency to *help* install "democratic" leaders who are nothing of the sort (Iran in 1953, 90% of South America, Afghanistan, etc). We like democracy except when the people pick someone we don't like (e.g. the people of Palestine electing Hamas) then we tend to get a little more involved, usually through the CIA, and the people hate us for it. So we get one more country to add to the ever-growing list that hates us. I would like to hold out hope that we'll avoid that this time but we've done it so... many... times... I dunno. I have a not-so-good feeling about this and not because of the people of Egypt. I'm much more worried about the people of Washington.