The revolution in Tunisia was speedy in its conception and execution, serving as a catalyst for change in the Middle East, but change won't come tomorrow, or the day after, and if it is to be a lasting change, its roots will bear fruit not just in the Middle East, but, most of all, in America, where a new popular revolution is needed more than anywhere else in the world.
Change in the Middle East won't come without a long, and bitter fight. The transformation of Tunisia, a very small country, and a transformation of an entire region is not the same. The political crisis in Egypt and other despotic Arab countries with strong links to the terrorist regimes in Washington and Tel Aviv won't be resolved anytime soon.
Washington and Tel Aviv are hoping that things will quiet down in Egypt, President Mubarak will take one for the team and step down with his head held high, and the new Vice President Gen. Omar Suleiman will take the reigns and maintain the architecture of the regime while instituting some meager reforms. Imagine that Obama is Suleiman, and Mubarak is Bush. What we are witnessing is the regime putting on a new mask to appease the angry crowds for the time being. Whether or not it will work is a different question, but if all goes according to plan, behind the scenes nothing much will change - comforting the managers of the U.S. empire and the hardliners in Israel.
The decision to quietly nudge Mubarak to leave office, and replace him with the CIA's man is supposed to be a fine example of Washington's pragmatic statesmen at work, but it is more like business as usual, because the last thing that Washington's deceptive rulers want in Egypt and the Middle East is grassroots democracy and real change.
If the uprising continues its momentum, then criminal back-door deals with longtime insiders of Egypt's terrorist regime will not fix the situation. It is an insult to the people of Egypt that the leaders who broke the country are now positioning themselves as the custodians of the country. Would any intelligent person hire a rock band to clean the hotel room that it trashed the night before? The right thing to do is kick them out.
What bankrupt empires and dictators have trouble understanding is that repression doesn't work forever. Egypt and the Arab world can't be suppressed until the end of time. The Arab soul is rising and it is hungry for justice. Crumbs will not do. Only a revolution can satisfy the Egyptian people's desires for freedom. The publisher of the Angry Arab website, As`ad AbuKhalil, writes, "The Arab sees for himself/herself the events of Tunisia, Egypt and everyplace where angry Arab voices and fists spring forward. The anger is not surprising; the silence is. The trouble isn’t with protesting, but with staying at home."
The people of Egypt and other Arab lands want real structural changes in their society, which means overturning a system of political, economic, and military control that has been unjustly propped up by their own dishonorable leaders as well as the corrupt leaders of U.S. and Israel. The hardliners in Washington and Tel Aviv will never be ready to cut off ties with loyal friends who are dedicated to accomplishing their interests and goals in the region, especially in regards to Palestine and Iran, no matter the high death toll that comes from imposing violent rule on the Arab masses.
Washington's Arab allies, or, to put more truthfully, its accomplices in crimes against humanity, and crimes against the peace and security of the Middle East, and all of Mankind, know their foundations are weak, but so do U.S. leaders. The entire war on terror is built on lies and propaganda. When these corrupt regimes fall, including the terrorist regimes of America and Israel, they will fall together, not separately, and they will fall starting in Washington, not Cairo, at the hands of the American people.
What happens on the streets of Cairo and Alexandria in the following weeks and months is incredibly important, but even more critical for democracy and freedom and the future of humanity is what happens on the streets of Washington and other American cities. If there is going to be any systematic change in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab world, it has to begin with a changing of the guard in Washington, where money and support for hated dictators is never in short supply, even in times like these, when everybody around the world is united against them.
Will real change come to America? Will America's constitutional republic be restored? Will the American people follow their revolutionary tradition and make JFK and MLK's dreams of world peace a reality? Will the hijacked U.S. government violently oppress the American people? These questions must be asked in light of the political turmoil in Egypt and the Middle East.
Some of the questions answer themselves. Washington's political leaders are preaching about democracy, freedom, and the need for reform as large crowds fill the streets in Arab kingdoms, but at the first sight of civil unrest in America they will be quick to declare martial law, stifle free speech, and instruct hardcore police thugs to crush peaceful protests, arrest and intimidate journalists, and silence the calls for real change and political reform in Washington.
The day when the American people say enough is enough like the Egyptian people are doing day after day, the rhetoric about democracy and freedom from Washington's two-faced leaders will disappear, and replaced by anti-democratic talking points like "we must impose law and order to get back to normality," or "we must protect the public from domestic extremists, and confront the challenges of a new era."
If protesters march on the streets of Washington with the same velocity in their steps and determination in their hearts as the protesters in Egypt they would be called domestic extremists and terrorists by U.S. government officials and the media, not democracy activists, and they would probably be fired upon by police thugs under the justification that they are disturbing public order or hurting the country. As Paul Craig Roberts says, "When it comes to waste and corruption, lies and deception, the U.S. government has no equal."
