I trust from Indonesia to the Middle Eastern countries, every Muslims asked would disagree to allow Mubarak, the most indispensable Washington ally in the middle eastern world, to cling to power. On the other hand, if Egypt is allowed to crumble, I’m afraid the country would turn into chaos and Egypt would forever be another Iraq.
It is like a tug-of-war between opponents on one hand and the regime, on the other hand. How long the demonstrators could last by hurling taunts and rock in exchange of artillery barrage of tear gas? Or it could be true that the demonstrators have no well-organized leader that lead to a soft kind of response from the army.
At the end of the day, it is the question of who could sustain enough endurance to sustain the power struggle: rakyat (masses) or regime.
True enough the poor masses need to feed themselves whereas Mubarak had been fed by Washington a total of $600 billion in US aid over the past three decades.
Of course, the money is not for him but most go to modernize the army in order to check on Iran, Hamas and other Islamic revolutionary groups which could spark uprising and cause trouble in that part of the world. America has to make sure that in the power equation, Israel has to be ahead of Mubarak’s Egypt.
Perhaps, the final count is rakyat vs America. But geopolitically, the rakyat are people in the Muslim world.
Idea-logy 