Momentous Egypt — Hope for Humankind from a Place that Once Seemed Unlikely to Offer It

© 2011 Peter Free

 

11 February 2011

 

 

Egyptian courage was on display for 18 days

 

Eighteen days fighting dictatorship is a very long time.  Particularly so, when the dictator’s secret police know who you are.

 

From a historian’s perspective, the Egyptian demonstrators’ ordeal in up-ending President Hosni Mubarak has been one of the most astonishingly impressive manifestations of a people’s determination that I have seen in my six-plus decades.

 

We don’t know how this will turn out, given the Egyptian military’s monolithic hold on state power and the benefit it gains from the nation’s undemocratic ways.  However, the fact that the military did not use its armed capability against its own citizenry says something about the bonds between and among Egyptians.

 

Now that Tunisians and Egyptians have demonstrated the power of massed people in gaining slivers of self-determination, the world’s future may be more hopeful — if probably even more fragmented and tumultuous than its past.

 

History’s cyclicity may be raising Egypt to a position of beneficial prominence again.  We can hope.