Sure the Egyptian military jettisoned Mubarak under pressure to do so, but he was/ is dying anyway. What they did not jettison is their direct control over about 1/3 of the Egyptian economy. How did they get that huge a portion of control over employment and salaries in Egypt?
Time Magazine, in a moment of rare honesty, mentioned just how in an article dated a year and 1/2 ago. Here is what was said in brief….
‘But despite the military’s predominant role, the Egyptian public knows remarkably little about how the military actually operates. That’s because writing about the military has long been off-limits to the press. The secrecy begins with the military budget, which Jane’s estimates to be about $5 billion. However, one independent researcher has calculated that actual military expenditures could be four or five times larger. Part of the budget is made up of U.S. military assistance of $1.3 billion annually that provides financing for Egypt’s major weapons systems. (The funding must be spent on U.S. goods and services and is therefore effectively a subsidy for U.S. defense contractors.)
Read more: Time article.
He who pays, controls. And the US Pentagon has paid to control Egypt’s military, as it in turn controls affairs in the Arab country with the largest population in the Arab World. So we can see how Egyptians face the same problem that Americans face, which is just how can democracy be restored in our respective countries? And the answer is the same for Egyptians as it is with Americans. We have to dismantle military control over our respective national economies.
Egyptians, over 85 million of them, all know where the money came from to establish a military dictatorship over them. It came from the USA. Our US population is responsible for their suppression. For more info about this issue, see Some Egyptians Leery of U.S. Military Money’s Impact on Their Election –‘Like Pakistan and Turkey, the Egyptian military controls a significant part of their country’s economic activity, and benefits from continuing subsidies from the U.S. government.’ Indeed, this is so.
