...and he will, by next Saturday, no less. I said that this last Saturday, giving the president of Egypt no more than a week. I'm sticking to that prediction.
I neglected to get this forecast documented before now. I wanted to document that I called it before the media "experts", just like I called the 2008 election for Obama about six months before it happened. Go back in this diary and check if you like.
It always amazes when important things are about to happen, that so few people are willing to boldly predict what is obviously inevitable. The current popular uprising in Egypt has got all the talking heads on TV and radio buzzing and fluttering around, trying to sound smart, and clearly missing the mark. They seem to be unable to grasp the fundamental change that is sweeping over the Arab world right now. The fact that the people could take to the streets in Tunisia and topple the regime in a few days goes right past them. Come on now. How much does it take to make someone see that Hosni Mubarak is dead meat, and he won't last much longer?
I'll get to why this seems to be such an obvious slam dunk later. For the sake of argument, accept that as the premise now and let me review the tip-offs I've seen in the media.
Secretary of State Clinton, on Meet the Press, was asked something like, "Is it time for Mubarak to step down?" She responded very quickly, "Yeah, but...," and launched into the standard diplomatic litany about respecting the sovereignty of foreign nations while supporting the democratic aspirations of the the people and admonishing the government to not murder its citizens.
Did you hear that? Hillary tipped her hand, perhaps subconsciously, that she thinks it's time for Mubarak to resign. She said, "Yeah, but..." She answered in the affirmative to the question before beginning her formal response. My take on this is that they have been discussing this very question at great length and that the consensus is that he should leave office as soon as possible to avoid further violence. I would bet anyone that such is her personal opinion if there were any way to verify it. But, you can't. She's a diplomat and she knows exactly what she can and cannot say.
One can, however, draw other inferences from her remarks. She didn't draw any comparisons to other overthrown dictators, recent or in the distant past, nor did she give any indication that the US would change its policy or relationship with Egypt. Like all diplomats, she implied, and in a very guarded manner, that if Mubarak committed an atrocity like the slaughter in Tiananmen Square in 1989, we wouldn't be backing him any longer. The threat was there, but you had to be looking for it. I was.
I'll bet Mubarak got the message, too. Absent from Hillary's remarks was any kind of admonition to the protesters. She said nothing that implied, "Cool it, you naughty anarchists! Stop throwing rocks and loyally support your president!" No, she didn't say anything of the kind. Her only mention of the opposition was to talk about legitimate aspirations of the people. That's code for, "We're with you!" The fix is in. We know this because she didn't say anything good or bad about Mubarak, but she indirectly praised the protesters by talking about legitimate aspirations. Our government wants Mubarak to step aside and we're not going to lift a finger to help him keep control. We learned our lesson with the Shah of Iran and we're not going to repeat the fiasco of being on the wrong side of the Iranian revolution.
When you listen to diplomats, learn to clear away the underbrush of diplomatic niceties and get to the gist of intent that the diplomat is expressing. They always let you know what they want. It's a very calculated move, too. They want you to know what they think without having to express it explicitly. It's like the idea of "plausible deniability". They want to be able to say, after the dictator has been dragged into the streets and hung up by his heels by an angry mob, "We didn't tell anyone to do that. We abhor all violent acts and exhort all parties to work together for a peaceful solution." We always say that, even when we send in hit men to murder popular, legitimately elected leaders, like Ngo Dinh Diem or Salvador Allende.
President Obama made some remarks on the situation, too. He did balance his comments by admonishing protesters to refrain from violence. But, he didn't tell them to cool it, either. And he didn't say anything good about Mubarak. We're obviously ready to cut him loose.
Pundits are all yammering about the situation and very few of them have a clue. One guy on Meet The Press said that he thought Mubarak would step down, as if there were any question about that, but declined to predict when that would occur. Someone else at the round table asked, "When? Will it be by the end of the year?" This showed me that few news people get what's going on. They are still talking about "if" Mubarak resigns and what he is likely to do to hold on. This is going to be a very rapid process. I am convinced of this because of historical perspective and clues from Egypt.
Egyptian citizens speaking up right now on social and news media are intent on the idea that Mubarak is finished. They want him out. They are not going to go home quietly and wait for an election or a plebiscite, regardless of any promises made by the current regime to allow all to participate or agreeing to actually count the votes fairly. You can't rig elections for decades and expect anyone to believe that one. Egyptians scoff at this notion. They want the guy gone and they will keep pressing until he goes. There is a simple reason for this unity of purpose.
The Egyptian army has just disclosed flatly that it will not fire on protesters. That's all anyone who wants to run amok in the streets needs to know. It's carte blanche to everyone who doesn't like the government to let their true feelings be known. In China, in 1989, they didn't know what the army would do, but a lot of people risked their lives and their freedom to sue for democracy. They failed, but only because those in power felt secure enough to murder their own people, and they trusted the discipline of their troops to follow orders and mow down unarmed people. That takes balls. It takes even more balls to be unarmed and face down armed troops not knowing if they will kill you or not.
The Chinese were, and probably still are, that cold-blooded, but I don't think the Egyptian army is that strong-willed or disciplined. The fact that they would explicitly guarantee today that they will not slaughter their fellow countrymen is clear evidence that their leadership is looking beyond Mubarak's regime and trying to figure out how to keep their jobs when the new civilian leadership takes charge. If the elite officer corps won't give the order to shoot, which would make them enemies of the people and subject to being torn to bits by angry mobs or shot by mutinous troops, then there is almost no chance that any soldier on the front lines will shoot to kill. It's just not going to happen. I'll bet that even junior officers are now mulling over whether or not they would follow orders to kill Egyptians. I'll bet a lot of them would not. They might rightly fear that if they did relay such orders from higher-ups to troops, there might be a mutiny and that they might be killed by those under their command.
A more likely scenario regarding the role of the military in a political upheaval in Egypt is that the top generals tell Mubarak that it's time for him to go, and firmly escort him to house arrest or exile. Remember that the military leadership has always been an important player in Egyptian politics. All four presidents of the republic (Naguib, Nasser, Sadat and Mubarak) were military men. The first three were leaders in the coup that toppled the last king of Egypt, Mohammed Ali. The generals today must see themselves as guardians of the nation first, and much less as the "muscle" behind the nation's leader, even if he is one of their own.
At some point, the balance swayed from disciplined adherence to presidential authority as military officers to trying to maintain order during a regime change. I suspected that the army had gone over to the protesters' side on Saturday when the news reports talked about how the troops were hanging back and not confronting the crowds directly. They were driving around in a show of force, but were being very, very careful not to provoke a violent confrontation. They were leaving that to the police and security forces. When the riot cops were repulsed by the mobs, the army did not rush in. The police and security goons are now hiding in their enclaves.
Mubarak himself hasn't been blustering much or wagging his finger at the mobs. Despite imposing a curfew, which has been uniformly ignored, and a few weak protestations about maintaining order, he hasn't tried to bully the people into abandoning their protest. He has not spent any time making public addresses, either. Perhaps he is afraid of ending up like Nicolae Ceauşescu, former president-for-life of Romania. Ceauşescu and his wife couldn't believe that he could be hooted down when he tried to address a crowd from a balcony in Bucharest. They thought about it for a day before escaping by helicopter. That delay cost the Nicolae and his wife Elena their lives. Three days later they were given a summary trial, then taken out and shot.
Mubarak won't wait too long to quit. When it gets bad, and he knows that he has no hope of retaining control, he will resign or flee the country. Because of their action and today's statements, I think the military will tell him when it's over before he comes to that conclusion himself. He's a smart man and not a delusional psychotic like Ceauşescu. But as a former military officer, he still might have more pride than prudence. He won't come to harm unless habitual stubbornness kicks in and his personal guard encourages him to hold his ground.
If Mubarak is told to go, he will. He isn't talking tough, possibly hoping to delay the inevitable by making small, incremental concessions. He probably wants to leave office peacefully by "retiring" by degrees soon enough to avoid being overthrown. Today, he announced that he wants to have a dialog with dissidents. If he's smart, he will just do what they ask, which will result in his leaving hastily. I'm not betting on that, though. Mubarak has already tried to reshuffle his ministers, to absolutely no effect. Put yourself in the place of any angry Egyptian citizen. Mubarak says, "I'm changing the leadership in these ministries." You, who have been growing ever more desperate and angry about the police state you have lived in for as long as you can remember, say, "Oh. That's all right, then." You just put down your protest sign, throw away your T-shirt with an angry slogan, and go home quietly. Right. No one has done that and no one will when the government offers crumbs. Cynicism weighs heavily against being placated in that matter. No one believes promises by "the authorities" in the middle of a revolution. You just say, "Bullshit!" And, you keep on pushing.
We all know about violent revolutions and the horrendous toll in human life and misery that is visited upon any nation that has one. Perhaps this is why so many so-called pundits on American TV were still talking yesterday as if Mubarak might regain full control or at least hold on for any length of time. Nobody was saying that Mubarak was finished, and no one was saying that he would be gone by the end of the week. I'm the first one I've heard say that. They know that very few people will lay their lives on the line to oppose a despot. They know that if a lot of people are killed, everyone else becomes fearful and shuts up for a while. They're right, but the dynamic has changed in Egypt, just as it did in Tunisia a few days ago. We saw how fast things changed as soon as people got the idea that they would not be mowed down by bullets.
For every person willing to stand up to armed troops, there are ten who won't do that, but will stand up to police with billy clubs and tear gas. For every protester willing to take to the streets and take a beating, there may be as many as a hundred who will join a peaceful protest march where there are just too many people to kill or beat up. We saw this during the Vietnam War. At first, it was just militant students getting beat up and arrested. This became increasingly common as discontent with the war spread to the general populace. Four were gunned down at Kent State, and two more were slaughtered at Jackson State, but otherwise, there were not too many deaths resulting from protests. When the National Guard was called in, they rarely did more than shoot off tear gas and fix bayonets. (I faced those bayonets once in Berkeley and was tear gassed on two other occasions by police.) Once there were enough people who wanted the war to end, and they felt secure that they would not be killed or beaten up, there were bigger and bigger protests until the war had to end. It was inevitable because that was the popular will, and there were enough people who would publicly proclaim that.
That's where we are in Egypt now. The people, in general, want Mubarak to go. The ranks of those shouting slogans in the streets grow every day. The army has no intention of massacring the people, and they know it. Things will move fast now, faster than you might think. That's why Hosni Mubarak will not be president of Egypt next week.
We can learn from peaceful revolutions and non-violent regime changes. While it wasn't really peaceful, Tunisians did the job in a few days with negligible loss of life. The police and military didn't get the message quickly enough to balk at orders to kill, so a few people were killed. Egypt's military was surely watching this situation closely and will do a better job of keeping matters in hand. Don't expect any atrocities.
My favorite revolution was one I caught the tail end of in 1974. I was in Madrid and was planning to go to Lisbon the next day. The couple who ran the pension in which I was staying was watching television in their kitchen and heard about the revolution in Portugal. The wife, who knew my plans, very nervously communicated to me that it was "dangerous for foreigners". Bear in mind that Francisco Franco was still in power in Spain and everybody was afraid of democracy after 38 years of fascist dictatorship. I asked her if she would be afraid to go to Portugal herself. She said that she would not because she was "iberiana". That made no sense to me, so I continued with my plans. I figured if she thought that she would be all right, I could assume the same. I spoke Spanish well enough, though Portuguese was challenging for me, that I felt I could talk my way out of a difficult situation. I watched TV with them for a while during coverage from Lisbon, but saw no rioting or gunfire. In fact, the army looked like conquering heroes returning home for a victory parade. Their tanks were festooned with red carnations and women were kissing them. I wasn't the least bit worried. The Spanish couple seemed freaked out, though. They knew that Portugal had a dictator, just like El Caudillo (Franco), and the idea of getting rid of him surely meant trouble for someone.
People are always afraid of political change until they get a taste of democracy and let go of fear. The Spaniards were quaking in their boots, remembering the horrors of their own civil war less than four decades before. To them, the idea of trying to remove Franco was tantamount to committing suicide. They must have expected wholesale carnage in the streets of Lisbon. The Portuguese had never endured such a conflict and were not afraid. They flooded the streets of their capital city, shouting encouragement to those overthrowing their dictator.
It was a done deal from the start, and it happened in a few days, because the army had no intention of firing on its own people. When I got to Lisbon a day later, there were no problems for me or anyone else. The only difficulty I had was in trying to take photographs of the troops in the main square. A soldier stopped me because he had been told to do that. He was not angry at me, and I had no fear that he would shoot me. I apologized and put away my camera. I was respectful a deferred to his authority, even though he had a carnation in the barrel of his rifle. I had gotten one picture of a soldier atop a tank, with a carnation in his lapel, hatless and smiling.
That's how it goes in a popular revolution now. You flood the main squares of the major cities and yell until the despot makes a run for it. In Uganda, Iran, Congo, Haiti or the Dominican Republic, the strongman got on a plane with enough gold bullion and cash to live a life of luxury in another country. Egypt's Mubarak is a frugal guy who lives a simple life. He won't try to steal a lot of money, but he will leave when it becomes obvious that he has to. That day is fast approaching. My best guess at this writing is that it will be within a day of the big rally planned for Cairo where they are trying to get a million people to assemble and demand his resignation. They will succeed. The only question is when. You know what I think. I leave it to you to prognosticate further.