analyst juan williams. so i think it s fair to say in these first hours after the fall of mumbarak, everyone is saying it right thing. the government is saying it is going to turn over power to a democratically elected government, that they re going to honor the peace treaty with israel and the demonstrators say they are going to go home. how confident are you that this is going to work out and how much influence does the obama administration have to try to shape events? well, confident would be an overstatement, i think. it s the middle east, after all. you would have to be foolish to be confident that anything would work out too well and revolutions do often go off the rails for various reasons. having said that i think basically for the last three or four weeks the skeptics have been proven to be too skeptical. the nay sayers who have said oh it could never happen, it s going to be violent, his departure will mean the muslim brotherhood taking over the next day or chaos in the str
you know. it s not in my nature but let me give a hat tip to liz cheney. you should do it more often, juan. because liz cheney when she was at the state department and the bush administration had been pro-democracy all along. thank you, juan. what they have done is try to help mumbarak when he was rigging those elections last year. i think that sent a message that change was necessary and i think young people did respond. i mean, stunning to me to think that a third of the population there under the age of 15. that shows you how young. chris: that s not unusual in the middle east. right. yo st. ight. yo said something also. combine these two factors, so many young people and so many unemployed people, especially young men, uneducated, seeking change and having no way to do it. and now we are seeing there is a way. we have seen tunisia. now we have seen what s taken place in egypt. there is already pressure in jordan. so we see this building now across the middle east. the
my assumption is that s move the folks that are in the military actually control the major parts of the economy. and without economic freedom, without allowing the entrepreneurial spirit to be released with the egyptian people to go out there to create their own democracy and economy, it s going to be tough to get a real democracy flourishing in that region. shannon: i quickly want to ask you both the same question. how do you feel the administration is doing, has done so far, where do they go moving forward, congressman shif, start with you. i think they do pretty good. i was urging them for the last couple weeks to be more forward leaning and supportive of president mumbarak s exit. i don t think we want to be on the wrong side of history. this was a movement of truth for the egyptians as well as he us. all of that being said, i think they have a pivotal role being played. egyptians will determine their fate. we have a strong relationship with the egyptian military. i think they
egypt, they know that the game is really different. it s going to be a different world from what it was under hosni mubarak. for example, the big enemy here, the big worry is iran. they might have had mumbarak s tacet approval for an attack on iran. that is unup likely to happen with the new egypt. shannon: thank you, greg. what does mumbarak s departure mean for the united states. joining me is democratic congressman adam smith, ranking member of the house armed services committee. congressman, thanks for joining us today. shanks for having me on, shannon. i appreciate it. shannon: let me start out by asking what involvement or shouldn t we have in egypt as they are trying to put things back together? it s a difficult balance. i think the president has struck that balance. obviously we have strong interest in having a stable government in egypt that we can work with. on the other hand, you know, the people in egypt are primarily interested in controlling their own destiny, not
you know. it s not in my nature but let me give a hat tip to liz cheney. you should do it more often, juan. because liz cheney when she was at the state department and the bush administration had been pro-democracy all along. thank you, juan. what they have done is try to help mumbarak when he was rigging those elections last year. i think that sent a message that change was necessary and i think young people did respond. i mean, stunning to me to think that a third of the population there under the age of 15. that shows you how young. chris: that s not unusual in the middle east. right. you said something also. combine these two factors, so many young people and so many unemployed people, especially young men, uneducated, seeking change and having no way to do it. and now we are seeing there is a way. we have seen tunisia. now we have seen what s taken place in egypt. there is already pressure in jordan. so we see this building now across the middle east. the question is w