The Egyptian Uprising against a Fat and Corrupt Tyrant

DEBORCHGRAVE Wash Times Feb 2 2011 The Mubarak legend Longtime
strongman can't withstand media barrage
By Arnaud de Borchgrave
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/feb/2/the-mubarak-legend/
The Washington Times
6:02 p.m., Wednesday, February 2, 2011
UNDERPRESSURE: Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak tells his people
Tuesday he will not seek re-election. (Associated Press)
President Hosni Mubarak has been at the top or near the top of the
Egyptian pyramid since 1975, when he was appointed vice president by
his friend and mentor, President Anwar Sadat. A fighter pilot, he was
trained at the Soviet Air Force Academy at Bishkek in then-Soviet
Kyrgyzstan. As chief of staff of the Egyptian Air Force in 1971, he
bluffed his Soviet air force advisers into a humiliating defeat.
It was during the 1969-71 War of Attrition that followed Egypt's total
defeat in the 1967 Six Day War. The three major Egyptian cities along
the Suez Canal - Suez, Ismailia and Port Said - had been leveled by
Israeli bombs. About 18,000 Soviet military advisers were in Egypt,
courtesy of Gamal Abdel Nasser. They had installed batteries of SAM-2
anti-aircraft missiles to cover the 103-mile length of the canal
against Israeli air attacks.
His Soviet advisers informed him that they had detected a gap in the
Israeli radar screen around the Sinai Peninsula, then occupied by
Israel. They told him this was a golden opportunity to fly through the
gap and drop a few bombs on Israeli-occupied Sharm el-Sheikh as a
morale-booster for a dispirited Egyptian population.
A skeptical Mr. Mubarak declined the invitation.
Five Soviet pilots climbed into Egypt's MIG-21s and were ordered
through the radar gap to bomb Sharm el-Sheikh. Israeli fighters were
waiting for them. Four of the Russian-piloted Egyptian aircraft were
shot down. One skedaddled back to base. A Russian general was recalled
to Moscow.
The Mubarak legend was established. He was promoted to deputy minister
of war and then in October 1973, following the Yom Kippur War, he went
up another rung to air chief marshal. Sadat had found a successor.
This reporter interviewed Mr. Mubarak a dozen times over 30 years.
Perhaps the wisest piece of advice came in a lengthy conversation in
Sharm el-Sheikh less than a week after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist
attacks that caught me in the region.
"I know you are going to retaliate massively, but there is one thing
you must not do," he said. "Do not send American troops to fight a new
war against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Such an operation must
be conducted by Muslim troops alone." If U.S. troops and other NATO
contingents are dispatched, he added, America will find itself cast as
the villain in a war against Islam, "which is precisely what Taliban
wants."
So what would he suggest? I asked. "Egyptian, Jordanian and Moroccan
troops, for example," he said, "and don't forget the Pakistanis. They
had a lot to do with standing up to the Taliban after the Soviets
pulled out following 10 years of failed operations."
Mr. Mubarak contributed two Egyptian divisions to the liberation of
Kuwait in the first Gulf War (1990-91).
He is paying the price for having been a close ally of the U.S., a
phenomenon that has achieved cliche status. He was sitting next to
Sadat when Islamist extremists in the army riddled the president with
bullets, assassinating him for signing a peace treaty with Israel.
Between World War I and World War II, Egypt hovered between faux
colonialism and faux democracy, between bad and worse. It has only
known six years of real democracy (1946-52) in its 5,000-year history.
Much has been written about revolutions occurring because the masses
are poor and their conditions beyond tolerable. Egypt has to produce 1
million new jobs a year to keep up with population growth, and more
than half of its 83 million people eke out an existence on $2 a day.
The million-strong anti-Mubarak demonstration in Cairo's Liberation
Square was a bread-and-circuses affair that demanded blood - Mr.
Mubarak's.
He's a lame-duck president, dead man walking, said would-be-President
Mohamed ElBaradei, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who could see himself
as an interim successor. Mr. Mubarak pledged he would not be running
for president again in the fall, which was his intention all along, as
he maneuvered to get his 48-year-old son Gamal into the job. Now both
are out with no redeeming features.
With the Gamal ploy squelched by Twitter, Facebook and Al Jazeera's
platoon of strategically placed correspondents openly siding with the
million-plus demonstrators, Mr. Mubarak was backed into an electronic
corner.
The conscript army is Egypt's most respected - and popular -
institution. It moved in after the police, unable to cope, were
overwhelmed. Inmates from four Cairo prisons escaped in the confusion.
Vandalization of stores, houses and apartments followed.
The army's tanks and armored personnel carriers - all U.S.-supplied
with an annual $1.2 billion in U.S. defense aid as compensation for
the 1978 Camp David Accords, which established normal diplomatic
relations with Israel - kept huge crowds from spinning out of control.
The main concern in the White House, State Department, Pentagon and
governments throughout the Arab and Muslim world is the notorious
Muslim Brotherhood. It stands for Islamic Shariah law and is close to
the Iranian-funded Hezbollah movement in Lebanon.
On Jan. 26, 1952, the Brotherhood's terrorists torched about 300
buildings, including the old Shepherd Hotel (where this reporter had
arrived the day before) and many luxury stores in Cairo. This led to
martial law - and six months later to a bloodless army coup that ended
the monarchy and brought Gamal Abdel Nasser to power, where he stayed
for the next 18 years.
The Brotherhood tried and failed to kill Nasser in 1954.
During World War II, it sympathized with the Nazis against what it
then called the colonial occupation of Egypt.
In recent years, officially banned, it has morphed into a regular
political party and commands about 20 percent of the popular vote. Its
political philosophy is certainly closer to that of Iran's thuggish
theocrats than to what they brand American colonialism.
Democracy in today's Egypt is the antithesis of stability.
Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor-at-large of The Washington Times and
United Press International