Now They All Want Freedom

I should have seen this coming. We should have seen this coming. Tunisia rids itself of a decades-long dictatorial regime after a few days of protest, and now nearby Egypt is on the brink of ridding itself of the regime of Hosni Mubarak.

Mubarak has been in power since Anwar Sadat was assassinated in 1981. Nearly 30 years.

The main problem that the protesters have is that they don’t hate the Egyptian army. They actually like them, even though they are there expressly to bear arms against them now that peace has broken out between Egypt and Israel.

And whoever controls the army controls Egypt.

But throwing the people a bone, Mubarak went ahead and said he was going to dissolve his government – except for himself, that is.

So here is my question: is it going to stop here? Or is Syria next? Or Libya?

I like it that people want freedom and opportunity in an area where neither has been especially prevalent since practically forever. But what disturbs me is that this movement seems to be tinged with religion, and we all know when we read the Old Testament that when religion and politics has mixed in the Middle East, when people start to smite each other, giving their deity full credit for their deeds, that’s when I get a little uncomfortable with freedom and opportunity.