Protestors flooded the streets and chanted “the people have ousted Mubarak” and other slogans as the  announcement was [...]]]>

Mubarak is Egypt's President no more. Image via Wikipedia

Embattled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who has been the country’s autocratic leader for three decades, has resigned and handed power over to the Egyptian military after weeks of angry protests.

Protestors flooded the streets and chanted “the people have ousted Mubarak” and other slogans as the  announcement was made on live television by Egypt‘s Vice-President, Omar Suleiman. Egypt will be under military rule until free elections can occur.

Well, that’s the assumption anyway.

See, it’s not as cut and dry as “the military’s good and Mubarak’s bad.” The mainstream media – not just in the United States but throughout the world – had been optimistic about military response due to soldiers in the street assuring protestors they wouldn’t be harmed and in some cases showing subtle signs of support such as hanging signs in support of the movement.

However, what a soldier does in the street and what military leaders do behind closed doors may not be the same thing.

(photo credit: Tara Todras-Whitehill, Associated Press)

To its credit, the military didn’t try to crush the uprising; that was the job of the State Police agency, which failed miserably in its efforts. The optimistic viewpoint is that the military’s neutral stance and attitude in the last eighteen days was due to a conflict over whether to follow the orders of its Chief (Mubarak) or bend to the will of its people. The more cynical outlook – and admittedly one I lean towards – is that the writing’s been on the wall for some time and the military engaged in smart politics by showing itself as the peace-loving troops who yearned for a new democratic government but whose hands were conveniently tied.

The bottom line is that the military can be commended for not taking part in the crackdown, but there is also no indication that it did so by refusing orders from Mubarak. The best we can do is hope for a good outcome and that the attitudes and intentions of the military are sincere and in the best interests of the people. I won’t say that we take them at their word, because nobody knows what that word is.

The news that broke today isn’t that Democracy has returned to Egypt, or that freedom reigns supreme. The news is, simply, that Mubarak is gone.

Whether that means a free Egypt is a complicated question for which we won’t have the answer for many, many months. We are eager to equate freedom from Mubarak’s autocratic rule as freedom in our Western understanding, along with social reforms. But that’s wishful thinking, and it’s not based on any of our understanding of the region.

So the question remains: how “free” does Egypt really want to be?

Only time will tell.