tehran. i didn t ride in on a bale of hay yesterday on this, but the situations really are different. i don t believe the threat to egypt shan democracy right now comes from the muslim brotherhood. yes, they have to be watched and no, they re not a genuinely or by definition democratic and with all due respect to the dni secular group. these are muslims who played a long game and the long game is the influence in egyptian policy from within to change the socioeconomic institutions of the state. will the new egyptian government be as acquiesce ant? is the new egyptian government going to be any more eager to cooperate with us in our counter terrorism policy against islamic
there s anything of that kind that the military moves very soon and very quickly. what will the role be for democracy that is created in egypt going forward? had you been here, you would have seen this new or renewed positive relationship between all sections of egyptian society, including muslims the constitution will be affected in the original, the crazy and in the egyptian political scene, modern it has to be part of the 21st century, egypt has to be reform and be in the arab world and the middle east. and this requires a modern constitution. how do you envision egypt s
violence but there wasn t in tahrir square. we are lucky that mubarak had the good sense to finally leave. we are lucky we have in the army a respected institution, and we may yet get lucky that the secular we have got seven, eight months to go until the next election, sohe clock begins ticking right now for american policymakers and egyptians to start working with each other to figure out how you build on what you have achieved so far and have a genuine transition to democracy and not a regression to the old. look, i ll go with mark twain on this, i mean history doesn t repeat, it rhymes, this is not france in the 18th century, this is not lennon and it s not even
enough. they really wanted to see the regime go and there would have been real questions of whether suleiman could have stayed as mubarak s right hand man, whether he could have sustained power in the face of this anger. so i think we avoided that problem by going straight past him, leaving the constitution aside. that s the key question over the last 24 hours, the egyptians decided to take their existing constitution, flawed as it was, and just put it aside. and in america, we said, oh, my god, extra constitutional, but sometimes making an extra constitutional status is a great thing for democracy. it wasn t such a big loss in the first instance. there are clearly nervous folks in the leadership in israel. but where do you think arab leaders are most nerve us, having seen this tidal wave or the winds of change or whatever
leadership promises to do the will of the people and usher in democracy. but now matter how you cut it, today history was made in egypt. let s go live to tahrir square, nic robertson has been there all day. nic, do you think they ll ever get tired of freedom over there? reporter: right now, they re living in the moment, living on the wave, riding the wave, it s a wave they have built themselves from the internet revolution they began just 2 1/2 weeks ago. it s the euphoria, the crowds are thinning a little bit, but there s still a lot of people on the street. how did it feel when you heard that president mubarak was stepping down? at first, i was at a friend s house and we just we did it. people were cheering and we were so happy.