Two more cents on Egypt

A lot was written and said about the riots already. The mainstream media is filled with nonsense, wishful thinking, and romantic tales spun from the gossamers of imagination.

The good news, you can chuck all of their ramblings out like yesterday's trash.
The bad news, their lies are much nicer than the truth.

Egypt was conquered numerous times in its past. First, by the Persians, then by the Greeks, Romans (later, Byzantines), muslim Arabs, Mamluks, Ottomans, French (Napoleon's short invasion), and Great Britain.
Truth is, the current inhabitants of Egypt have as much in common with the ancient Egyptians as a bunny living in the wreckage of a 747 has with the science of aviation. You may find surviving genetic lines, but genetics don't make a nation; neither does cashing in on the Pyramids.

During all this time, Egypt was ruled by various dictators. The British implemented a monarchy, which fell prey to a coup in 1952. A second coup two years later had put yet another tyrant (and an aspiring Nazi), Gamal Abdul Nasser, in charge. Despite having backed egypt in its attempt to ethnically cleanse the fledging Israel in 1948, Nasser turns on the British and nationalizes the Suez canal, which triggers a war with Britain, France, and Israel. Egypt losses the canal, and the Sinai peninsula for the first time - only to gain it back due to US intervention.
As always when muslims survive a defeat, Nasser was viewed as a hero, and the US failed to gain Egypt as an ally. Instead, the Soviet Union moved in, and provided weapons, training, and funding to the poorly-managed state.
Eleven years later, Egypt is ready for another aggression, and, at the head of an alliance that includes Syria, Jordan, and forces from seven other muslim nations, it prepares to wipe Israel off the map. Instead, its military suffers an appalling defeat, and Sinai is taken for the second time.
Three years later, Nasser is replaced by Anwar Sadat, who for the most part shares his views.
Following six years of low-scale 'attrition' war around the Suez canal, the 'peacefulg' Sadat launched an invasion over the canal, which wipes out the undermanned Israeli garrison*.
Despite initial successes, the soviet-powered Egyptian war machine is brought to a halt in the desert, is encircled, and finally forced to surrender. Once again, Israel backs down due to western pressure, and refrains from inflicting any real harm on Egypt itself.

Six years later, Sadat, and the antisemitic American president, Jimmy Carter, form the humiliating "peace treaty" that Israel signed, in which it handed over sinai - a territory more than twice its, with oil and gas reserves - to the Egyptians, and pulled out all its citizens from it, in exchange for a piece of paper that ensures that there would be no war, as long as Egyptian leadership doesn't want one.
What makes this agreement truly humiliating, though, is a clause revealed by non-other than the infamous Wikileaks:

"President Mubarak and military leaders view our military assistance program as the cornerstone of our mil-mil relationship and consider the USD 1.3 billion in annual FMF as 'untouchable compensation' for making and maintaining peace with Israel. The tangible benefits to our mil-mil relationship are clear: Egypt remains at peace with Israel, and the U.S. military enjoys priority access to the Suez Canal and Egyptian airspace."

In other words, the US government agreed to continually bribe Egypt to maintain a very loose 'peace' with Israel. If you think this simple blackmail doesn't make sense, consider that despite this diplomatic victory over Israel, Sadat was still murdered by muslims for his 'betrayal' of their faith.
Which brings us to Mubarak, who managed to keep a reign on this region for almost thirty years.

Now, when we're talking about a revolution in a muslim country, it means a more extreme faction is taking power. That faction, in turn, is going to be under threat by even more extreme groups, and so on. All 'reforms' are fundamentalist in nature, because islam teaches that the solution to every problem in the world can be solved by grabbing a weapon, and murdering everyone who doesn't agree with your version of islam.
Or, for the very least, a lot of Jews who did nothing to you.

While the mainstream media spends its time fantasizing about a Democratic revolution in Egypt, the closest this country is going to get to a Democracy, is by invading one (and I'm not saying which, because who knows, maybe it would be the Democratic Republic of the Congo), or as Michael J Totten put it:

"If Egyptians elect the Muslim Brotherhood in a free and fair election, and the Muslim Brotherhood then rigs or even cancels every election that follows, Egypt will not be in any way shape or form a democracy. It will be a dictatorship that happened to have an election."

As I've shown earlier, Egypt's history is about one absolute ruler after another. The uprising of the common man is about putting food on his table - not abstract ideals. He simply wants someone who can get the job done, not to change the system!
Those media darlings - the students that post on Facebook and Twitter - are not the heads of some new Social-Democrat revolution (Israeli media provided numerous comparisons, from the Soviet Union in 1991, to Romania casting off Nicolae Ceauşescu), they're powerless, and will - as in any revolution - be taken over by someone who holds real power.
Someone who works for the muslim brotherhood.

And the muslim brotherhood works for a greater muslim force - the same one that funds Al-Jazeera, had islamized Turkey, put the Hizbollah in charge of Lebanon, brought Hamas to power in Gaza, vows to commit genocide on Israelis, and is threatening the stability of Jordan, along with any other American ally in the region.
A westerner sees the nation state as a de facto unit, but in the tribal middle east, it is a new, and foreign idea. Iran, Qatar, and Syria are just lines on a map for the common muslim - he will not fight and die for them.
But he will die for Mohamed.

And instead of doing something to block this expansion, which bears ill-will to the entire world, the American government, out of either sheer idiocy, or (worse) a deliberate attempt to sabotage American interests in the Middle East and North Africa, is calling Mubarak to step down.

No, he may not be a saint, and he's not the warmest ally (the Democrats have been busy grinding that ally's face to the dirt through the past several decades), but he gets the job done. Stabbing him in the back now serves only the anti-western forces, because it broadcasts to the entire world, in clarity so bright that it rivals the sun itself:
An alliance with America isn't worth squat.

And this is the reputation the United States would have to work with, in the hostile diplomatic field of tomorrow.

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To summarize, take a good look at this map:


The green area is the ring of puppet regimes and loose alliances that is being built by Iran and its version of islamic fundamentalism. At the moment, it is unclear where will Jordan and the UAE tilt; while Iraq's future as a cohesive unit is in serious doubt. In a twist of faith, thanks to the American abandonment of allies, Saudi Arabia - the only meaningful Arab/muslim opposition to Iran, is about to be surrounded and isolated. Yemen is 'light green' as it's unlikely to play a bigger role than a terrorist base.

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* In 1973, the Israeli leftist government allows the arabs to attack first on all fronts - deliberately sacrificing the lives of unknowing citizens, in order to appear like the 'good guys' to the world. They succeeded in the first part, at least, and almost brought the end of the state in the process.