The young males addressed by departing Hosni Mubarak, Omar Suleiman and Ahmed Shafiq are now to conduct maneuvers with the newest top dawgs of Egypt; two of Egypt's most senior military officers - Defence Minister, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, and Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Sami Hafez Enan.
A professional demeanor as demonstrated by the Egyptian Army during the 16 days of protests in Tahrir / Liberation Square emboldened the testosterone-driven day by day right up and through to the realization of the abdication of the Dictator, Mubarak moments after his "Psyche!" speech pretending to step down when he was really going nowhere if it were up to him.
News of the protest routinely credited the Egyptian Army, an investment by the United States and it's ranking Professional Military, as the single stabilizing force in this nation reaching the natural end to a thirty year structure that saw Mubarak oppress with the Army as his big stick. Events of the past two and a half weeks, however, showed the Police "Force" rather than the military as the goon squad. Armored and poised, the Soldiers who rolled army tanks into Tahrir Square seemed more like the Americana Community Day appearances of the Municipal Vehicles Zoo where firemen and police give the kids a tour of the awesome machinery owned by their neighbors to defend and protect them and their parents' property.
Of course, it was not necessary to address the young women of Egypt, nor their mothers, for that matter. Those citizens had already made it clear to the young men departing each day for demonstration duty that the use of "inside manners" would be observed under pain of execution when they returned home. All of Egypt is a museum of civilization. No household permits the venting of pent-up steam indoors for the threat posed to lamps, walls, dogs and clean floors.
Google Guys cultivated the demonstrations and Social Media electronics contributed vastly to the connectedness with the rest of the world as it happened. Why Obama didn't take more purposeful action a year ago in Iran during similar efforts by the youth to release themselves from despotic rule is unclear to me at this moment, but I have no doubt that the restraint practiced by the professional Military, not the rash behavior of the "Young Males," ultimately encouraged Mubarak, Suleiman and Shafiq to place the future of Egypt into capable hands.
Tantawi and Enan are among top level members of the Egyptian Military Command who exchanged training and planning with U.S. Military Professionals and are perceived as capable of delivering an Election in Egypt with the proper temperence and equanimity the idealistic young men demand at this moment. I cannot, however, take seriously, any of those "demonstrators" who appealed emotionally both in the hours of tense standoff leading up to the transition, nor during the celebration which followed.
The next leaders of Egypt, or at least the parties that will form around them, were planning, already, for the outcome, whichever way it went. I hope there were Women among them. I hope that cooler heads were wisely noting that what was coming as "Change" was best served battened down with responsible funding, respectful channels for redress and an open platform for economic development. In such an ancient civilization, one in which a tradition of Queen Hatshepsut and Cleopatra holds as much lustre as any Pharoah, it is my sincere hope that the 52% of the citizenry rendered invisible to the media will make the most of that much desired "Super Power" by going about their power-securing work in plain sight of the "emotionally blinded" usual suspects of anarchy. As modern Egypt knocked on electronic wood to announce itself to the future, the reasons for governing success and prosperity were revisited on us: invention of Papyrus and hieroglyphics combining to serve posterity with written history. Learn from that which your forebears have written and keep those young males busy. If they "believe" that they rool, they do...what care you that they can neither see you nor covet that wealth which you comprise.
Great site for "playing" Egypt: http://www.eyelid.co.uk/index.htm
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