Shhh: "quiet military coup" in Egypt...don't tell anyone

Mohamed Hussein Tantawi,
head of Egypt's Military Council, holds more power than Vice President Suleiman

Quiet Military Coup Was Behind Mubarak's Resignation  -Avi Issacharoff & Amos Harel

President Hosni Mubarak stepped down after what appears to have been a quiet military coup. After Mubarak's Thursday night address in which he announced he was transferring his powers to Vice President Omar Suleiman but would not resign, Egyptian military leaders, anticipating the anger of the protesters, told Mubarak that if he did not step down voluntarily the army would force him out.
(Ha'aretz)
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The Upsides of Egypt's Revolution -Jackson Diehl

Imagine an Egypt that consistently opposes the West in international forums while relentlessly campaigning against Israel. A government that seeds its media with vile anti-Semitism and locks relations with Israel in a cold freeze. A regime that allows Hamas to import tons of munitions and Iranian rockets into Gaza.

That would be the government of Hosni Mubarak - the same one that the U.S. propped up with tens of billions of dollars in aid. If Egypt now makes a transition to genuine democracy, its foreign policy might not get much better from Washington's point of view. But it is unlikely to get worse.
(Washington Post)


Sharansky: This Is the Moment to Put Our Trust in Freedom -David Horovitz

"[I]n Iran [when demonstrations erupted after 2009 'elections'] some - big student organizations, trade unions - felt that they could go to the barricades. And millions more were sitting and waiting, with all this Facebook and Internet. But then, at that moment, [President Obama] the leader of the free world  indicated that engagement with the regime was more important than changing the regime. And immediately, it all collapsed."

"[I]t is good that it is happening in an Egypt that gets the second biggest foreign aid package from the United States. America has a lot of leverage."
(Jerusalem Post)
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UPDATES: 

A Recipe for Revolution or More of the Same? -Dr. Jacques Neriah

Egypt is ruled today by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, under the leadership of Field Marshal Muhammad Hussein Tantawi. The country is now ruled under military law, something which the masses did not expect and which does not fit in with the idea of democratic reform.

At 76, Tantawi is no revolutionary. He and his colleagues have a lot to lose if they accede to actual demands for change. A transformation of the regime into a civilian democratic regime will not be viable for the military, and he will likely try his best to maintain the advantages his class has always enjoyed.
(Institute for Contemporary Affairs-Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs)


The Revolutionaries' Gamble on Egypt's Future -Thanassis Cambanis

The Egyptian revolutionaries have asked a military dictatorship to manage the transition in the hope that a committee of unelected generals who have spent a career defending Mubarak's order will now willingly write themselves out of power.
(Atlantic Monthly)
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