I don’t think they’re ready to go home just yet. That "gradual transition idea" [As Mubarak Digs In, U.S. Policy in Egypt Is Complicated] doesn’t seem to have been met with much enthusiasm. My read is that it took a very long time for them to get to the point where a small spark would set off such an outpouring of feeling. Obama is said to be miffed that the C.I.A. didn’t see it coming. I doubt that the people still in the square saw it coming themselves. It reminds me of what Rosa Parks said when asked about why she didn’t budge that day when the bus driver asked her to change seats.
"People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn’t true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in."
I think the reason I keep using American Civil Rights metaphors when I’m talking about Egypt is that I was there recently and I saw what it was like. It consciously reminded me of a place I knew all too well a very long time ago. The only tired they are is of the government of President Hosni Mubarak, and he’s still there, so they are too. Gandhi would be proud…
What a wonderful statement from Rosa Parks — “I was tired of giving in.” Thanks for reminding us of that. This was not an intelligence failure, as you say. There’s no way to predict when that “tired of giving in” feeling tips over into action instead of “giving in” one more time — even less predictable when it is involves millions of individual feelings that somehow get galvanized into action.
What starts it is what’s unpredictable. The collective response, once they get the scent that there might be some hope in protesting together — then it becomes more predictable.
This is only gonna get worse. Things are about to change dramatically. We will be in a world war unlike the previous 2 from the 20th century. It will be a century long world war. Everyone needs to prepare themselves.The Muslim Brotherhood has been touted by experts as the possible next ruling party of Egypt. Some label them as a radical islamist group, others say they’re a moderate movement that respects democracy.