So Much Has Changed

I don't know where to begin. There have been so many changes and absurdities over the past month.

In the world realm, Friday night at 6:02pm Egyptian time, 32 years to the day the Shah of Iran fell, President Hosni Mubarak stepped down and turned the country over to the Military Supreme Council. After 18 days of relative peaceful protest, the people of Egypt changed their government through civil disobedience. The future is unclear, will it become a true free and open secular democracy or an Islamic theocracy?

At first blush it appears to lean more to a secular open democracy. But they have a long ways to go to create such a government. Their current constitution was not created for such a government, their Parliament is not a representative elected body. They are appointees of only members of Mubarak's party. For the sake of all of humanity, I hope they can create and sustain a plural, open and free democracy. Otherwise the turmoil in the world will be profound as other middle-eastern countries could fall into anti-western Islamic fundamentalist regimes. Should Egypt become a stabilized democracy, that flows into other Arab nations, thereby improving the stability of the world and greatly reducing al-qaeda's ability to grow. We can only hope.

I do think President Obama had a very difficult situation in how he was going to deal with the crises in Egypt. Yes he wants it to evolve into a open democratic government, but Mubarak was a strong supporter of peace and stability in the middle-east. Plus he had to gingerly work with the other Arab leaders to assure them America does not plan on changing regimes in their countries, but to also let them know that if public outcry for democracy rises in their country, they better listen and change their form of governance.

The pressure has always been on any American administration to maintain oil market stability by supporting the dictators in the oil producing Arab nations. Otherwise the world's oil supply could stop and the world's economy could collapse.

Over the next several months we will see how the rest of the region reacts. Will these dictators relinquish control and form democratic governments? My guess is no. There has never been a dictator who willingly gave up their power to the people.

So with this in mind, I do think Pres. Obama proceeded carefully and deliberately as best as our government could with a sovereign nation to influence in a positive way an outcome without causing bigger problems with other nations we are dealing with. It will be years before we truly know what was going on in the background between the leaderships of other nations, including ours, and the Egyptian government. However I do think that the outcome was more a result of the Egyptian peoples protests and strikes, than foreign influence.

I do want to point out to those who are "Second Amendment" fanatics who claim that they need to have guns, even automatic rifles,  machine guns and 30 round clips, to over throw the American government, should it become tyrannical, that this Egyptian Revolution was won with peaceful civil disobedience and not with guns.

The Berlin wall fell because of peaceful actions of the people and not armed conflict. Just think about this situation, it is the military that ultimately determines the outcome of revolt. If they support the people, then change occurs. However, if they support the regime and open fire on the protesters, as they did in Tiananmen Square in Beijing China in 1989, then no rifle or hand gun will over throw the government. Even if the Chinese protester had weapons, any military these days are too powerful to overcome, it's not 1775 with muskets on both sides of the conflict. It would require some or all of the military to swing to the peoples side with their tanks, fighters, artillery and technology to defeat a militarily armed opposition, not simple long guns and hand guns. It may play well in the movies as fantasy, but its not reality.

America also must realize that invading a country [Iraq] and trying to establish a secular democratic government does not work, it must come from within the people of the country. They must want it bad enough that they upraise as they did in Egypt and force the change. If the people do not want it that bad enough, such as in Afghanistan and Iraq, then you end up with corrupt quasi democratic totalitarian governments that are no better than the dictators they replaced or worse.

A second lesson to learn here is that revolt can occur here should the gap between the wealthy and the rest of the populace increases, cost of living climbs dramatically and unemployment remains high. In nearly every popular revolt is a direct result of high food and energy prices, lack sharing in the nation's wealth and inability to find meaningful work, which leads to poverty.

America is not immune to this potential as we are seeing the foundation of these events occurring now. The question is, will the very wealthy recognize this potential and will the conservatives who support them also realize the risk of their pro-wealthy policies have in creating a potential revolt. We already see this anger with the Tea Party folks, if this anger continues to grow and more people start to join them, you could see major protests in the streets of America. We are already seeing food prices escalate, fuel prices are rising, and unemployment is high and more people are becoming poor; loosing their homes and all they have. The seed has been planted. Will the Republican's continue to water this seed for political gain or work with the Democrats to reverse these trends and reestablish balance and the middle-class? Only time will tell.