Egypt News: At Least 62 Killed In Last 2 Days, Officials Say

From the AP via the Huffington Post news wire:

With protests raging, Egypt's president named his intelligence chief as his first-ever vice president on Saturday, setting the stage for a successor as chaos engulfed the capital. Soldiers stood by – a few even joining the demonstrators – and the death toll from five days of anti-government fury rose sharply to 74.

Saturday's fast-moving developments across the north African nation marked a sharp turning point in President Hosni Mubarak's three-decade rule of Egypt.

Residents and shopkeepers in affluent neighborhoods boarded up their houses and stores against looters, who roamed the streets with knives and sticks, stealing what they could and destroying cars, windows and street signs. Gunfire rang out in some neighborhoods.

And

The crackdown on protesters has drawn harsh criticism from the Obama administration and even a threat Friday to reduce a $1.5 billion foreign aid program if Washington's most important Arab ally escalates the use of force.

And

The protesters united in one overarching demand – Mubarak and his family must go. The movement is a culmination of years of simmering frustration over a government they see as corrupt, heavy-handed and neglectful of poverty.

Egyptians were emboldened by the uprising in Tunisia – another North African Arab nation, and further buoyed by their success in defying the ban on gatherings.

At the end of a long day of rioting and mass demonstrations Friday, Mubarak fired his Cabinet and promised reforms. But the demonstrators returned in force again Saturday to demand a complete change of regime.

The president appeared to have been preparing his son Gamal to succeed him, possibly as soon as presidential elections planned for later this year. However, there was significant public opposition to the hereditary succession.

More here.

Okay, this is pretty serious.

Of course, I'm no expert on Egypt, no Egyptologist, but I do have an understanding of Egypt's overall role in the whole Middle East dynamic, which puts me way ahead of most Americans, which, admittedly, isn't much to write home about. Nonetheless, here are a few thoughts.

Even though Israel kicked Egypt's ass in 1967's Six Day War, the outcome of the next one, the 1973 Yom Kippur War was far more ambiguous, and threatened to bring the Soviets into the conflict. This made the US reconsider the regional situation: only a few years later, President Carter brokered the Camp David Peace Accords which ended hostilities between the two nations, and essentially turned Egypt into yet another US client state run by a brutal dictatorship.

This was good for the US for a couple of reasons. It kept the Russians out of Egypt, which my older brother once described as the only Arab country that's actually a nation state in the way we understand the term here in America, and it effectively ended Arab hopes for toppling Israel. Thus, Egypt became the biggest recipient of US aid money after Israel, and the vast majority of that aid has been in the form of military spending.

This relationship has been the lynch pin for American diplomacy in the Middle East for over three decades, and it's worked pretty well from that point of view. Egypt's government is secular, a plus from a diplomatic point of view, and the nation has been pretty stable over the years, which is really all the US establishment gives a shit about. Of course, the US establishment doesn't give a shit about the fact that such stability exists only because of the Egyptian government's willingness to fucking torture any and all dissidents. And many of these dissidents are Muslim radicals.

Indeed, one of the first rogue actions of the jihadis who eventually formed the nucleus of what is now called Al-Qaeda, people we were supporting in their fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan, was to assassinate Egypt's President Anwar Sadat, the guy who signed the Camp David peace agreement with Israel, back in 1981. And we shouldn't forget that two of the 9/11 terrorists were Egyptians. So not only does Egypt produce more than its fair share of Muslim extremists, their radicals aren't just willing to kill to further their political goals: they've already done it quite spectacularly.

This is not to say that this uprising is all about radical Islam. It's not. It's probably safe to say that, while Muslim, most Egyptians prefer, and are very used to, secular governance. But make no mistake, the sometimes locally popular brutal dictatorship that has controlled Egypt since the 1950s has been heavily supported by the US since the late 70s. And this kind of relationship, the US supporting evil dictators in the Middle East, is exactly the kind of thing that has inspired and motivated the radical Muslim terrorists we say we're fighting in the endless "War on Terror." That is, if this thing turns out badly, if Islamic extremists somehow end up running Egypt, it will be, to some extent, our own damned fault. Indeed, it's almost laughable to hear the US State Department and the President issue statements in support of Egyptian democracy, when we've helped prop up their oppressor for decades. Typical bullshit rhetoric.

More generally, if Egypt ends up with an entirely new government, whether secular or religious, it is very probable that the new boss will reevaluate its relationship with the US. I don't know exactly what this would mean. They may think there are good reasons to continue the status quo as far as peace and stability go, or they may want to stop being one of America's client states, which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, given Israel's utter intransigence on the Palestinian issue, and America's utter unwillingness to use its leverage with the Jewish state to force some progress.

So, in short, I have no idea where this is all going. Nothing terribly significant could happen, from the US's standpoint, or the entire geopolitical calculus of the Middle East might shuffle itself overnight, for better or worse. But this is a big deal. I wish the news was explaining it all better.

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