much the foreign minister and so much a crete of the old motor, it s what the country wants. as far as elbaradei is concerned, perhaps he has a candy cap of too many years abroad. he s been away too long. i don t think it s about individuals. it s about the ability of the egyptians and the space given to the egyptians by the military regime. by a muslim man to create a new system and to go wand the new dictatorship. because this dictatorship is not yet spent. maybe mubarak himself is spent, but the military regime is not yet spent. and what we really need to focus on, what has happened in egypt, in fact, is the fall not just of the mubarak regime, but of the free regime born in 1952. and mubarak was just the latest inher inheritor. how can egypt find a way out of the straight jacket?
and very quickly, mona, are you more optimistic this approaching weekend than you were last weekend when we spoke? i am absolutely, wolf. you know, mubarak had been strangling e just a minugypt fo. here we are in day 11 of the up rising. watching my sisters and brothers in egypt organize, continue to come out in greater numbers. christian egyptians stood and protected muslim egyptians as they prayed. we are seeing this wonderful coming together that we haven t seen in egypt since 1919, the revolution of the last century, i amoptimistoptimistic. every friend of mine is saying congratulations and do it, the revolution must succeed. want to get more from mona, you can follow her on twitter. i tried to follow you on twitter, but i didn t see you. are you yet on twitter?
with us, the professor of middle east studies at johns hopkins school of advanced international studies. professor, if the president of the united states called you right now and said, professor, what should we do, what would you tell president obama? i have a feeling this president would not call me because i have been very critical of him. i think there is something wrong wit our posture toward egypt. there is something wrong with the american inability to connect with the aspirations of the egyptians for a change. there is something wrong with our secretary of state saying the egyptian regime is stable when she knew better. there is something wrong with our vice president biden saying that hosni mubarak is not a dictator when every child i egypt we see and every reporter is showing you hosni mubarak is a dictator. so, i think there is some real chaos. not only on the streets of cairo but chaos on our end, what to do
would be a day of some protests, but life would go on. life has just completely changed for everyone in egypt since then. we re slowly starting to digest the significance of it all. it does seem we re coming to the ends of an era in egypt. most egyptians i have spoken to have said it s impossible for hosni mubarak to carry on as if he s the president of all egyptians. there is a report the police may come back monday and we have to wait and see on that. are secret police, the plain clothes police, the ones who roughed you up several days ago and roughed up a lot of people and dragged people away, are they still out on the streets? reporter: it appears they are, although i think they re keeping a fairly low profile. aware at this point that egyptians have learned that they are powerful, too, and that they can fight back. in my neighborhood, speaking to my neighbors, there s a new
he was the son of egypt, a man who rose from the armed forces. he cared about his country, he was a modest man. there was a general of mubarak s generation and mubarak s class, if you will, in the military, who described mubarak as a civil servant with a rank of president. this is long gone now. 12 good years he rendered service to the egyptians, then finally he put together this unbelievable autocratic state. the minister of interior has 1.7 million people working for it. the whole treasure of egypt and egypt and mubarak has not been about developing egypt, solving the poverty of egypt, dealing with problems of egypt, been about simply the police state he has put together. there was a demeaning of egypt to insist that a son of his would have to be president, to be tempted to go that dynastic route, over 80 million people, the pact has been served and broken.