Egypt

First, some people in South Dakota are asking me if my family is safe. For them Jordan is Egypt is Yemen is Pakistan. It's the same country. I just tell them my family is OK, thank you very much.

Let me start by stating the obvious: Mubarak is terrible person. He's even worse than we expected. What was going on in Egypt with military cars running over people was disturbing. But almost any other Arab leader would have done much worse than that from day one of the protests. It's not a Mubarak problem, it's an Arab leader problem. Arab leaders would do anything, anything, to stay in power.

I don't think many people will agree with me on this, but it's not only Hosni Mubarak who is responsible for the situation in Egypt right now. Jamal Abdul -Naser and Anwar al-Sadat are also to blame for implanting dictatorship as an acceptable way to rule a liberal country like Egypt, and allowing intelligence officers to spy on their people and report whoever had unfavorable opinions about the president. As much as I respect Abdul-Naser, he paved the way for Egypt to become an autocracy. Al-Sadat was even worse, supporting empty-headed radicals who eventually assassinated him.

Egyptians proved to me to be much more civilized than what I've thought. All the protests were very peaceful until the government thugs started beating people. I still consider it a white revolution. Contrary to what most Jordanians believe, Egyptians do have class. Protesters themselves even cleaned the streets at the end of each day.

Some analysts in America continue to produce statistics about how radicalized the Egyptian society have become, and are concerned that the leadership in Egypt will be a fundamental one, one that will abuse women's rights and persecute Christians. I can't deny that such mentality does exist in Egypt, but it's the incredible oppression, poverty, and lack of freedoms that allowed these irrational ideas in Egypt in the 1950s to become somewhat popular. Egyptians and Arabs desire freedom as much as Americans do, and it's such a hypocrisy from some Americans to be stand against their own beliefs and values being practiced in other countries. I expect that from their presidents, but the people themselves, come on!

Finally the protests in Egypt are not between Egyptians and Mobarak, they are a fight between Arab citizens and their tyrant leaders. Never did Arabs have fair and just elections but for the past 2 weeks each one of us had an ambassador in Midan Al-Tahrir. Pick your side, it's a struggle between good an evil as clear as good and evil can be. Whatever will happen in Egypt will affect other countries

Whatever was going on in the past 2 months gave us hope and pride to be Arabs again. They'd better mark Mohamed Bouazizi's grave well because one day I will be going there and thank him. He started an era where Arab leaders will be afraid of their people and where opinions will be respected if they're unpopular. How will the future evolve is something I'm uncertain of, but it will be better.