He just said it in a speech to Egypt. He is waiting until after the September elections. HooBoy. Shit is going to hit the fan there even more than it has already.
He may be just a figurehead at this point. The military seems like it is taking over the government, and may realize that Mubarak resigning would leave a perceived power vaccuum it couldn't control. Hopefully they relay that to the people without bullets.
Yep but it was just a few days ago after his first speech that I said he would probably be hanging from a noose soon. That is my guess as to what happens.
That is the funny thing though. The Egyptian VP gets on and tells people to go home and go back to their jobs. Maybe if they had jobs to begin with, they wouldn't be there.
I knew this over a week ago. To preserve the rule of law, he'll leave after the election, just like it would happen here. This isn't Tunisia we're talking about. Mubarek didn't get off the tuna boat yesterday. It's a major country, not a banana republic. He's 83 and being retired to avoid a coup, not cause one. It will be an orderly transition, just like it would be here. He will retire to his dacha and die naturally several years later. His replacement will be just like him, only younger, like when the CIA replaced Marcos with Corazon Aquino, she of the yellow dress. No change in torture or anything else, but suckers around the world will think so. Calm down. Only because this matters to Israel is the media paying attention. This happens all the time.
There are at least a couple of coups per year, somewhere in the world. And those are just the ones out in the open. It doesn't include backstage machinations. When an 83-year-old King of Bhutan or dictator of Thailand is forcibly retired, you see an article and that's it. Inside the country, the people think this will bring about big change, and it does for a few months. Then nothing changes. False promises motivate people for war, too, not just retiring the head guy. Remember when we were told the war in Iraq would last only a week? The anti-war pessimists said no way, gotta be a month. If Egypt were truly threatening a meaningful revolution, the US and Israel would be busy right now preparing for war. Much ado about nothing. Tempest in a teapot.
Typically, if it is inconsequential, the President of the USA wouldn't give a victory speech today at some college about how the protesters won, only to be undermined later in the day by the actual person that the President demanded stand down. I do agree that the status quo won the day in Egypt. I disagree in that the US has made themselves a central figure in this conflict, and thus far, our calls have gone unheeded.
If you were in Egypt, you wouldn't think the US is running Egypt. I bet that in France, the media makes you think France is crucial in the events. In Germany, in Italy, the same thing. The US has made itself a "central figure" only in its own mind. If the "calls have gone unheeded," after Obama "demanded" that Mubarek turn tail and run, then that proves that the US is not the "central figure" that you American chauvinists think. You say that the President of Egypt "undermined" Obama by staying in power until the election, following the rule of law. Do you think Obama runs Egypt? From Egypt's point of view, the undermining is of Egypt, and the sources are other countries, with laughable success. When an American president is in trouble and announces he won't run (like LBJ) or like when Nixon was holding on before he quit, what would you think if the President of Egypt made a speech "demanding" (as you say) that the US President quit, and then Johnson/Nixon made a speech saying he wouldn't until the election, and then some basketball poster in Egypt said that the President of Egypt had been "undermined" by Johnson/Nixon because the American president wasn't taking orders from the head of Egypt? You'd ask, who do you think you are, Egypt , to think you're running the US? How arrogant to say Mubarek "undermined" Obama. Obama is a peanut in this, playing domestic politics. Probably every Head of State in Europe is pretending to have a say, too. As we learned during the Vietnam War, the US is not the world's policeman.
Of course I wouldn't think that. Mubarak just slapped our President in the face today. China and Russia are running things these days, yet our President still tries to grab a mic or a camera every day during this thing. His bungling of Egypt is embarrassing his own staff at this point.
If you don't think the US is the world's policeman, you haven't been paying attention since the Wall came down. More specifically and correctly, we're the Chief of the precinct, divvying up the assignments and taking the hard (and potentially fruitful) ones ourselves.
The military is in charge. They will be making an announcement later today on the plan for transition to the eventual replacement government.
Their constitution requires an election within 60 days. Are they ripping that up and starting over from scratch? So volatile at this point. Great news if a secular and free democratic government emerges; horrible news if we end up with another Iran. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is already claiming that this is the birth of a new Islamic government in the Middle East. Switzerland just froze Mubarak's assest. Will this complicate things?
