1. Movement was clearly started by young, educated, upwardly mobile & secular Egyptians. See Below:
2. Violence was most definitely instigated by government thugs.
3. The Muslim brotherhood's relevance is questionable, although its importance grows with every conspiracy theory rant coming from the right and defense coming from the left. They don't matter and the more we act like they matter the more they will matter. Rather than continue to give them free publicity let's elevate the voices of guys like Wa'el Ghani....
4. Omar Suleiman, Mubarak's VP and notional man-in-charge of Egypt is/was the CIA's boy in Egypt with a known history of torture, politically motivated kidnapping and assassination. Some of the torture he committed was done at the behest of the US Gov. Suskind gave a good interview on CNN this evening to that effect. Conclusion: the longer we wait to come firmly behind the protestors in Egypt the worse the US ends up looking. If pundits here are already concocting conspiracy theories about us trying to preserve Mubarak because he knows "where all the bodies are buried" as well as our dirty secrets in the war on terror, THEN it isn't hard to imagine our Egyptian friends developing some nasty theories of their own about why the world's largest democratic republic has so far not taken up their cause.
5. We haven't taken up the cause of Egyptian democracy because of Israel won' t let us. If you're wondering why a small country on the Mediterranean gets to dictate the Middle East policy of the most powerful nation on the planet See: Mearsheimer & Walt.
6. What should you do? Well...whatever you can to help the moderate, secular voices in Egypt continue to gain momentum and spearhead this movement. If they fail, Egypt will fail and for those of you who really are terrified of "another Iranian revolution" type scenario then you should be lending your support to those in Egypt who are our best bet at avoiding it.
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