Walter Russell Mead: Mubaraks, Mamelukes, Modernizers and Muslims
[Walter Russell Mead is Henry A. Kissinger senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World. He blogs at The-American-Interest.com.]
Pharaoh Hosni is out; the Mubarak dynasty is done. This had to happen and, whatever comes next, the downfall of an undemocratic leader well past his sell-by date is a good thing in and of itself. The nation of Egypt is not a personal possession to be handed down like an heirloom from generation to generation. On this Egypt’s liberal middle classes, military leaders and Islamic activists agree — and they are right.
Hosni Mubarak overreached and his undignified exit is the penalty for that misjudgment. What is important now is not the fate of one man, or even of one family, but of a whole nation: 85 million rational beings, endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights which they are newly prepared to assert. How effective will they be at securing their rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? How successful with they be, after a “long train of abuses and usurpations” at reasserting control over their own destiny, constructing a new government and as our own revolutionaries put it “laying its foundations on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness”?
Egypt is an old country; I’ve been to Delta villages between Cairo and the sea where it was hard to see much sign of change since Cleopatra plied these waters on her barge. It’s also a wounded country; few places have been so deeply affected and so transformed by uncontrollable outside forces for so long in modern times. Both its age and its wounds will be working against it now; and as has been the case since the Babylonians first conquered Egypt more than 2500 years ago, the Egyptians must reckon with foreign interference and foreign interests even as they work to set their house in order...
Read entire article at American Interest (blog)
Pharaoh Hosni is out; the Mubarak dynasty is done. This had to happen and, whatever comes next, the downfall of an undemocratic leader well past his sell-by date is a good thing in and of itself. The nation of Egypt is not a personal possession to be handed down like an heirloom from generation to generation. On this Egypt’s liberal middle classes, military leaders and Islamic activists agree — and they are right.
Hosni Mubarak overreached and his undignified exit is the penalty for that misjudgment. What is important now is not the fate of one man, or even of one family, but of a whole nation: 85 million rational beings, endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights which they are newly prepared to assert. How effective will they be at securing their rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? How successful with they be, after a “long train of abuses and usurpations” at reasserting control over their own destiny, constructing a new government and as our own revolutionaries put it “laying its foundations on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness”?
Egypt is an old country; I’ve been to Delta villages between Cairo and the sea where it was hard to see much sign of change since Cleopatra plied these waters on her barge. It’s also a wounded country; few places have been so deeply affected and so transformed by uncontrollable outside forces for so long in modern times. Both its age and its wounds will be working against it now; and as has been the case since the Babylonians first conquered Egypt more than 2500 years ago, the Egyptians must reckon with foreign interference and foreign interests even as they work to set their house in order...