The Virgin Post

I have spent much of the time the last few weeks discussing various aspects of the Arab revolutions taking place in the Middle East.  I have not had a grand platform like this before.  I lament that it took this long to find this venue, but I will now use it to share a few thoughts.

  What began as a "bread riot" in Algeria spread quickly to Tunisia, where the downtrodden eventually managed to organize through social media, leading to the ouster of a man in power for decades.  The idea quickly spread to Egypt, and it took only one man who was slapped by a police officer (a female, at that!  An Arab female allowed to be a police official!) to self-immolate as a means of protest when his frustration was not provided an audience to be discussed.  Taking a cue from the success in Tunisia, Egyptians immediately began to organize through Facebook and Twitter and take to Tahrir Square (aka Liberation Square) to voice their pent up frustration with the thirty-year Mubarak regime.

   It was not as easy as it was in Tunisia, and there was certainly a good amount of "will he stay or will he go" intrigue.  A day after announcing that he would see his nation through to the next election cycle "as a father would do for his children," Mubarak announced that he would step down.  After all of the pause, one must question whether this was not a fait accompli and he purposely delayed the timing so as to secure his financial interests and organize a sub-Mubarak regime for the future, or if he truly believed that the protests would grow tiresome and end.

  At any length, it has become official that Mubarak is stepping down.  Hurrah for the tendrils of true democracy taking shape in perhaps the most important Arab nation.  But wait.  Isn't it the Military that is taking the reins and holding the interim government together until free and fair elections take place?  Wasn't it the military, under General Hosni Mubarak, that did the same with the Egyptian government thirty years prior, which led to his ascension and stranglehold on the nation?  Does a scratched record skip just like this?  Of course.

  Optimism should be sequestered in this instance for quite some time.  I do not recall an instance in history in which a military took control of a nation in such turmoil, then later relinquished that control to a civilian government constructed under a new constitution.  There have been many voices equating the actions in Egypt with the American Revolution, and it causes me to laugh.

  Hope for the best, but be ready to grab your ankles and take the pain.  I do not see this as the equivalent of the Iranian Revolution, but there will certainly be a great backlash from this put upon the Western interests, and no Chevy Volt is really going to help when the Suez Canal is used as a complete economic tool against the current existence of the Western nations.