(Pajamas Media) Michael Totten - Hosni Mubarak may have been overthrown, but the military regime founded by Gamal Abdel Nasser and his cadre of Arab nationalist officers in 1952 is still firmly in place. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, or SCAF, rules Egypt as a military junta, though you'd hardly know it as a casual visitor. The men with guns who were everywhere on the streets of Cairo when I visited a couple of years ago were somewhere else throughout most of July. Egypt is bereft of any portraits of a strong man in charge. Anti-Americanism and its anti-Zionist twin were not a strong theme, but those sentiments were bubbling just under the surface. A random man in an orange hat saw my camera, figured that I was a journalist, and decided that was the time to yell about Israel. "We will go to Israel next!" he said. "Israel is next!" There have been strikes all over the country, but at the same time most Egyptians are tiring of all this revolutionary activity. They yearn for normalcy more than anything else at the moment, and an end to the upheaval that has brought the economy to its knees.
2011-08-05 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive