As I write this, protestors in Cairo have been attacked by leather-jacketed thugs in support of the incumbent tyrant, President Mubarak. Reports say that the military presence has been largely idle; that is, they have not tried to restrain the aggressors or protect the victims. Plus ça change. No doubt by the time I proofread this missive, this glorified diary extract, things will have either calmed down or escalated. John Simpson has just said that the pro-Mubarak followers have been “chased off”; an anonymous tweeting journalist has also claimed that things elsewhere are getting very violent indeed.
Mubarak will want to stay in power. This is not as obvious a statement as it sounds; he has lost the population’s faith, he has also lost – to all intents and purposes – the army, which cannot move on the people as the world is watching. More importantly, he has lost the support of his fundraisers around the world. Even the US, which has been sending him something close to $1.5bn p/a to spend on fluffy pillows, hearing aids and women’s refuges – whoops, I meant guns, bombs and tanks – has lost interest in him, in a volte-face more bare-faced and duplicitous than Hilary Clinton’s flip-flop about WikiLeaks and the importance of transparency.
Usually, these despots will try to appear reasonable just before the guillotine falls on their tumescent tendrils. They will hope that, if they can retain a little of the cuddly old media persona so carefully cultivated by the sort of sycophantic scum send by Thatcher to appraise, and inevitably praise, Augusto Pinochet, then their powerful allies will enable them to enjoy a safe, long and prosperous retirement.
Unfortunately for Mubarak, he has made a critical error. Just when his allies were falling like dominos, he decides to send a gang of lunatics to savage his opponents. While the entire world is watching. What a dickhead. This is Mubarak’s last hurrah, his last grab onto the reins of power, and he has totally fumbled it. Now everyone despises him, even those who were still clasping that last atom of doubt.
This last surge of violence is Mubarak’s dead cat bounce. And no cat ever deserved to get its pinched, flea-ridden little head stoved in more.
So what happens next? Well, that depends on who you ask. Us liberals (that’s ‘us’, not ‘US’) are desperate for a nice revolution. We want to enjoy the same sense of occasion the Romantics experienced before the French Revolution (until it turned sour, of course, as some revolutions do). I suppose we also want to guide the Egyptian people in a direction we prefer. That would be morally repugnant; it isn’t our country. Simon Jenkins of the Guardian (for it is he) has declared that it is not our business and we should stay out of it. Sadly, it’s a small world. Someone should talk to him about butterflies and hurricanes. The concern amongst the pro-meddling lobby is that once Mubarak and his clowns have been booted out, the liberal and progressive voices in Egypt will bicker and squabble, while the less palatable characters will seek to capitalise on the presence of a power vacuum.
The West’s options (is there such a thing as ‘The West’? There isn’t much love lost between the nations of Yerp, the British don’t like the penpushers and poindexters of Brussels, and the US doesn’t like anyone, a stance that is thoroughly reciprocated, natch) lie there like strands of spaghetti in a noxious shit-stream sauce. Egypt sits there, in the midst of it, like a meatball. We don’t yet know what kind of meat it is; it could be rat-meat, or it could be venison. Mmm, a venison meatball. It’s what every liberal wants. But it could be rat-meat. Which is what every neocon is expecting. Does the West get involved, and risk alienating the very secularist democratic progressives it seeks to covet, by behaving like a nosey old patriarch? Or does it stand back and risk abandoning a nascent secularist and democratic progressive Egypt to the forces of chaos? And if the West sits this one out, will everybody else?
I’d like us to sit it out, but make it clear that we’re willing to help. Be ready to offer support to whatever the people of Egypt choose to do. It seems that they do not like repression and violence; otherwise, they would have overthrown Mubarak violently, which they have not done, or they would have not wanted to overthrow him at all. Already they show what sort of country they wish to live in.
What I don’t want to see is a running battle erupt between liberals and theocrats, insiders and outsiders. If that happens, we’ll have to watch something beautiful turn into something ugly. And we’ll be damned if we step in damned if we don’t.
For now, let’s be hopeful, and trust in “the people”. Let’s not see assume guilt, or behave as if the Islamic Brotherhood – a very minor group, hardly worth noting – has already started stoning homosexuals. After all, the Egyptian people have done something the British haven’t : they’ve overthrown a totally shit rulership. Let’s give them the same respect we’d expect from the rest of the world, were we in their position.
Let them give it a go, I say. The likelihood of the next regime being worse than Mubarak’s is there, and we should not forget that, but it is very slim indeed. More likely is that the new Egypt will be a much better place when Mubarak’s deceased feline stops bouncing, and the people will thank us for our trust in them.
