This Magic Moment

[sandial]

Over on Facebook, I wrote about how thrilled I was by the news from Egypt.

In the long comment thread which followed, my friend Tim Kyger cited a famous story about Benjamin Franklin at the Constitutional Convention. I'll quote the first online version I found:

The deliberations of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 were held in strict secrecy

Comments

[fjm]

Sorry, but they have gone back to work having handed power over to the military. That doesn't bode well.

[sandial]

Since all male Egyptians serve in their army, they identify with it in a way that we don't and vice versa.

Did you notice in the news that some of the older generation top officers tried to order the army to shoot at the protesters during the demonstrations and the younger officers refused?

The army is the only national institution in Egypt with broad respect from all parts of the population. There's literally no one else to plausibly nurse a transition now, unless you trusted the remnants of the old regime, which the revolution doesn't. (What other outcome _would_ have boded well in your judgment?)

It's a mistake to assume that all armies, let alone all Muslim armies, are alike. Recall that with the fall of the Ottoman empire, it was the Turkish army that created and guaranteed a secular republic there.

[fjm]

All of that is all well and good and I don't disagree, but it is the army that has chosen the dictators in the past. There is plenty of time for the upper echelons to get cold feet.

[apostle_of_eris]

When I heard that Mubarak had given up, one of my first reactions was, "Now comes the hard part."
Isn't anyone else thinking about the possibility of an Arab 1848? If so, I dearly hope for better outcomes.

As for the Egyptian army, things couldn't have taken the course they have without the army standing aside. I'll never know, but I really wish we could hear some of the conversations between Mubarak in the last 24 hours.

[sandial]

Today's edition of NPR's "All Things Considered" notes that "The protests that brought about the downfall of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak were by no means spontaneous. They were weeks, months, even years in the making, says Ahmed Maher, a 30-year-old civil engineer who helped organize the April 6th Youth Movement as well as the demonstrations that toppled the Mubarak regime."

Their interview with him shows that the organizers of the revolution are not naively standing by waiting for the army to grant all their wishes. You'll be able to listen to it online later this evening here: A voice of Egypt's revolution