message was sent out early on in the obama administration we do not interfere in the internal affairs of this autocracies but we are invested, our treasure is invested in egypt, we have this long standing interest in egypt and we are very timid because we insist should the despot fail, it be removed, he and his family removed, we insist egypt has no other option but islamic. kind of interest electedal poverty. it s hard. if president obama is watching cnn right now and we don t know if he is, look in the camera and talk to president obama and what would you say to him? president mubarak has been in power 30 years. i think he had 12 good years. 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
government to flee. in algeria, riots break out over a food crisis and housing crisis. in yemen, students take to the streets. emboldened by its neighbors in the region. on tuesday, egypt erupts. angered by the alleged corruption, police brutality and lack of reforms in their own country, thousands pour into the streets, demanding egyptian president hosni mubarak, who s held power nearly three decades resign. protesters are met with tear gas and violence. the next day, the violence escalates as egyptian security forces turn water cannons and tear gas on the growing angry crowds. the egyptian military urges calm. social media sights like facebook and twitter report they re being blocked by the government. thursday, a leading egyptian opposition figure, mohamed elbaradei returns home from
8 or 9 already. the consequences of instability in egypt to the united states are very important. this is the most important partner in the middle east. the strategic interests of the united states are on the line. as you know and president obama and secretary clinton have been saying, we are a democratic country, we affirm our own democratic values. we have to support the right of egyptians for freedom of speech and assembly and demonstrate peacefully. we ve seen a very difficult balancing act for the united states in the past seven days. should the president of the united states pick up the phone and call president mubarak and say, guess what, it s over, time for you to leave, begin that process? i thought when president obama obama spoke on friday night, he got it just about right. he made a quite forceful statement, for change in egypt for the government to open up, allow reform to move forward. i also thought it was appropriate for the president the other night not to call p
one word, it means be gone, leave. this is really what the moral pact of mubarak is severed. stunisia, egypt, look ahead the next six months, what do you see? it s really hard to predict particularly the future. we don t really know. we don t even know if this upheaval, this tsunami that hit the arab world, a man in tunisia sets himself in a blaze in a forgotten for lone tunisia town and you see the ton indonesian envy in every arab county, you have ea aracratic regime whether it s egypt or tunisia, ruled by a man at the top benefit dynss trtic
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 i dynasti route, over 80 million people, the palkt hct has been served a broken. he can only step aside. when you see these crowds saying