In Egypt, it should be easy to decide whose side we're on
These days, clarity and euphoria are dominating my mood and the moods of many ex-confused people around the world.
Looking at the first few days of the Egyptian revolution (which is still in progress) shows two easily discernible sides: the protesters and the Egyptian government.
Excuse my frankness when I say that the protester side oozes with what I can only describe as beauty. Resolutely peaceful, unarmed and creative in civility. People set up small "hospitals" with volunteer doctors and nurses. They set up lost-and-found stations. They even set up a small "prison" for captured henchmen who attacked them. Every morning those protesters who were able to go home to sleep brought food and supplies for the ones who slept outside.
The demonstrators are tolerant. They hold Muslim and Christian prayers side by side. Men and women march and chant together for a better Egypt.
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They are entertaining. They hold small art performances and public comedy sketches. Every day they come up with new, funnier chants. They make room for comedy even in their slogans. One sign read "Mubarak: Leave! I need to go home and take a shower." Another man, carrying his son on his shoulders, held a sign saying, "Mubarak: Leave! My shoulders are starting to hurt."
This is not just a revolution. It's a gem. The Egyptians are writing a book on how to stage a beautiful revolution.
On the other side we have the government, whose henchmen brutalized people with sticks, knives and guns. Close to 300 people were killed at their hands, many more wounded. We also have leaders so corrupt that their fortunes are worth tens of billions of dollars, while 40 percent of their people are below the poverty line. We have the state media - deceitful and journalistically hopeless. We have the former intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman (pronounced "Silly man" in Egyptian dialect), who became vice president for a few days and audaciously threatened the protesters on the 16th day of the protests.
Evidence is emerging that the Egyptian government was complicit in the Alexandria Coptic Church bombing early last month.
I'm a sucker for clarity. Confusion takes the skip out of my step and ruins my morning coffee. Clarity leaves me energized and refreshed.
It seems to be a pattern that every few years, God sends us an event like this to help clear our views; to show us who the bad guys are and who the good guys are. I'm going to allow myself to be rudely judgmental and wag my finger at anyone who stood on Mubarak's side, or even recommended that he be allowed to stay for a while.
For decades, corrupt dictators like Mubarak have managed to fool us into believing that the biggest threat to international security was their own people. In briefing after briefing they kept bilking us to support them in crushing their own citizenry in exchange for giving us a false sense of security. We fell for it, and they had plenty of time to rob their economies of billions of dollars while we turned a blind eye, since they were "necessary" to keep "the Islamists" in check.
Ironically, these Western-backed tyrannies created a world with much less safety. Now we have to worry about the millions of people we helped repress.
There is a better way. We are being shown what one Arab people -- the Egyptians -- are capable of. We are being shown their modernity, their tolerance and their creativity. They are the kind of people on whose side we should be.
Our stance against Mubarak and all Arab dictators should be as firm as our stance against terrorism itself, because if anyone played a major role in fomenting terrorism, it was they.
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Hani Hamdan, DDS, lives in Burnsville and practices dentistry in Lakeville, Minn. He is a contributor and editor of Engagemn.com and a source in MPR's Public Insight Network.
