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All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's antiwar radio.
I'm Scott Horton and our first guest on the show today is an old friend of the show, Joe Lauria.
He's a New York-based independent foreign affairs correspondent, investigative journalist and author, a freelance member of the Sunday Times of London Insight team.
He's also worked on investigations for the Boston Globe and Bloomberg News.
He's also written for the New York Times, the Post, the Telegraph, the Daily Mail.
That's the Washington Post, not the New York one.
The Guardian, the Montreal Gazette, the Johannesburg Star of the Washington Times, New York Magazine, etc.
Like that, he's on the phone live from Cairo right now.
Welcome to the show, Joe.
Thank you, Scott.
How are you doing?
I'm doing great.
Thanks so much for joining us.
My pleasure, my pleasure.
All right, so we're one week out from the fall of the dictator Hosni Mubarak in Egypt.
Tell me what's going on.
Well, if your listeners can hear in the background, I'm stepped out on the balcony.
I'm exactly half a block from Tahrir Square, the epicenter of this revolt, and they've come out in full force again on Friday.
It's the day off here.
They left the mosque and checked to the people.
We've got hundreds, maybe a couple hundred thousand people, just as exciting as when I arrived on Saturday night here in Cairo.
I left for 24 hours after Mubarak stepped out.
It's unbelievable the enthusiasm and exuberance of these people, the inexhaustible joy that they seem to have, and the dispute still breaking out between some people in the streets.
But for the most part, it's enormously peaceful and joyous.
All right, well, Joe, do us a favor and just hold that phone out for 15 or 20 seconds and let us listen.
Well, you might hear some fireworks.
Well, it sounds like chaos, but it must be a good time.
Well, you haven't heard any firecrackers, but there'll be one soon.
Well, you know, I'm not sure.
It's kind of hard to distinguish.
It just sounds like a lot of chaotic noise.
But I'm glad to hear you report the source of that noise is a massive celebration, hundreds of thousands, a couple of hundred thousand people, you say, there in Liberation Square in downtown Cairo.
That's correct.
It is chaotic noise.
They're very happy.
Wow, that's great.
So now tell us, now that the, you know, so-called civilian president has fallen, he's left the military in charge.
And we've seen statements here and statements there where they promise they're going to have elections soon.
I wonder if the crowd out there in Tahir Square seems to believe that.
Are they keeping the pressure up?
Is that the purpose or is it just a celebration?
Well, it is to keep the pressure up.
They want to make sure their demands are met.
And those demands, of course, are to lift the emergency rule, which has not happened, to have detainees released, not just political prisoners from before the revolt, as well as some people who were detained during the revolt that the military is still keeping for some odd reason.
That's currently Human Rights Watch.
And to have elections, free parties.
And certainly they have free of speech now, that's for sure.
That's probably the greatest victory in getting rid of Mubarak.
And they want to keep that up.
They want to make sure that there's no backsliding, that the military gets the message that they have elections soon.
But the situation politically is quite murky, to say the least.
I've had UN officials and others, they are not clear at all about how much, for one thing, how much consultation the military council is having with opposition groups.
And the opposition groups themselves are struggling to get leadership and form some kind of unity.
They're already starting to have disagreements and fights amongst themselves, which may not be good.
But the military council is not really being very transparent.
They're having these communiques every once in a while where this guy you've seen him on TV with, looks like a baseball cap, just announces bullet points.
And basically, right now, they wanted the people to go back to work.
But there's been an outbreak of labor unrest following the fall of Mubarak.
People want immediate raises.
They want immediate difference in their lifestyle and in their income.
So that is really one of the main demands that they have.
And the fact is, though, that when people, maybe now you can see on television in the States, this celebration going on, that sends the wrong message to tourists to stay away.
I could say it's enormously safe here.
I didn't have a pickpocket nickname.
I saw a couple of days worth of video.
But other than that, it's a very safe place to be because there's a party going on, but people are not going to come back.
Tourism, obviously, in Egypt, is an enormous source of income.
So yes, to answer your question, the people are back out there, I would say, number one, because they cannot believe that they can get out in the street and voice their opinions.
And they've just been bottled up for so long, for 30 years, so repressed, where they always treated foreigners as defense and had a lack of self-respect.
Now they feel reborn, as one Egyptian told me.
He'd given up on life 20 years ago, and you just cannot believe the big feeling that he has.
And that's what we're hearing expressed today, as well as right now under my window, as well as the message to the military that it's better to stick to a civilian transition.
But I must say that there are two theories about what can happen.
If they do have an election in six months, which is what they promised, the new parties may not be able to be formed in time and organized to have that kind of an election.
That would give an advantage to the Muslim Brotherhood, which is the best organized party.
But I have to say that there's been an overblown threat by Israel, the United States in Israel and their supporters in the U.S. about this threat being compared to Iran in 1979.
I think that's very much overblown.
First of all, there's only a small figure coming back to take over from the secular groups, which had happened after the 1979 revolution in Iran.
And second of all, the Muslim Brotherhood only commands about 20 to 30 percent of the support here, so they would have to form a coalition, even if they got that amount of votes.
And that would be very difficult for them.
And the people would go back on the streets if they ever tried any kind of extra parliamentary way to get the power.
And that is also the case for the military, which the only thing they could do to stop the people would be what we're seeing in Bahrain now and in Libya, which is to fire on with live bullets.
They did that for a while and that was defeated here.
All right, everybody, it's Joe Lauria.
He's on the line live from Tahrir Square in Cairo.
That's all the noise in the background, a couple of hundred thousand people celebrating the first week of the absence of Hosni Mubarak.
And now, Joe, on the question of the Muslim Brotherhood, since you brought that up and all the scare stories about them, can you tell us, you know, about the nature of the revolutionaries out there?
I mean, they seem all very young.
It seems like this all has to do much more with economics than trying to install some Sharia law from the 14th century or something.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
That is the most exciting thing about the Cairo uprising that we're seeing right now, that it is a secular, mostly secular movement of ordinary people in Egypt and these other countries right now, Jordan even having demonstrations.
And this is something no one ever counted on.
The rulers like Mubarak were able to get $1.3 billion in American aid every year for the military because he would save either me or the Islamists.
And we have to keep the peace treaty with Israel, which, of course, we want to see happen.
And I think the military has already said they want to do that.
That remains to be seen whether a party that is elected, a civilian government that comes here, would maintain that.
I think they most likely will.
This country cannot afford another war with Israel.
I don't think they want that.
And this this revolt has not been at all anti-American or anti-Israel.
It's all been about Mubarak.
I think that the Muslim Brotherhood has renounced violence.
They do talk about Sharia law.
But I would be very surprised if that came about here.
This has been an extraordinary revolution here in terms of it being mostly secular, ordinary Egyptians, the ones that have been repressed for so long that we heard nothing from.
But there's new pride right now in this newfound freedom.
And I think that that is what is going to continue to drive this, hopefully.
And the military knows that.
And they're giving a lot of space right now to express themselves.
And this is pretty much what's happening in the other countries.
It happened in Tunisia as well.
I don't think anyone ever expected that these people would finally speak up and bring down a rule like Mubarak.
This is very much a not only young people, but old people, women, children.
It's extraordinary to see the mix of people out on the street.
It is.
It's beautiful.
All right, everybody, it's Joe Lauria.
He's on the phone one half a block outside of Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo.
And we'll be right back with some more anti-war radio after this.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
And we got huge news coming in.
Protesters seized several East Libyan cities.
Reports say the Libyan government is relying on mercenaries from Chad in the fight.
Hot ammunition used in Bahrain.
Uprisings across the Middle East.
On the line from Cairo, from Tahrir Square right now, is freelance journalist Joe Lauria.
You can find him at the Huffington Post and all over the place.
And now, I forget where we were, Joe, but I, you know, why don't you just tell us more about what's going on there?
I will.
Well, I wanted to just bring up the Constitution issue because this, I think, is a very early indicator about which way this may be going.
The military two days ago appointed a committee of legal experts to draw up amendments, not a new Constitution.
That will be done when a civilian government is elected, if it's elected.
And they have to come up with this in eight days now.
They gave them ten days.
And this is already causing enormous tension here because some of the members of that committee would like to see a parliamentary government be scrapped completely, the presidential system that kept Mubarak in power for so long.
And others would like to see a parliamentary system, which would be easier to dissolve and perhaps more responsive to the people.
And that kind of a disagreement could cause a lot of trouble to come up with the kind of amendments that they're looking for.
But certainly, the power of the presidency would be curbed in, I think, by any standard here that people on the committee come up with.
The power of the president has been far too great.
Every institution has answered to him, despite some lip service in some iterations of Egypt's constitutions over the years.
And I should point out, after the 1952 revolution, which overthrew the British-backed king and fought the power again, a military government, they tried to write a democratic constitution.
They worked on it for two years, and they were unable to find agreement.
And General Nasser then took over.
And that was the end of the Constitution, basically.
And they just issued decrees.
So there is a possibility, unfortunately, we have to consider here, that there won't be agreement amongst the groups, the opposition groups.
They won't be able to come up with a new constitution.
And that would cause a lot of dismay here in terms of a smooth transition to democracy.
The U.N. helped to rewrite the Iraq constitution after Saddam Hussein was overthrown.
And that helped bring the courage of the Shiites and the Sunni together.
But the Egyptians are very proud.
They don't want any help from the U.N. on that.
They may take help on electoral monitoring, but it's way too soon.
The U.N. has not gotten any answers from that.
I think that the constitution is, how that goes in the next few days, could be an early indicator.
Now, are you familiar with which groups support a constitutional presidency, or would rather have a parliamentary system?
No.
You know, the fact is, I don't.
That's not very clear right now.
Not to me anyway.
These groups don't even have leaders, some of them.
But on the committee, I don't believe it's the Muslim Brotherhood that said that.
I'm not sure who it is that said that.
But there's definitely disagreement on that regard.
Well, you know, I'm way the hell out here in Los Angeles.
And so the best I can tell, what's most important to me is the spirit of the revolution and that it doesn't, you know, kind of peter out just because Mubarak has gone.
You know, the wait the revolution out and turn thing into simply a coup d'etat is obviously what Suleyman would prefer, right?
So, I mean, what we need to know is that the people in Tahrir Square tonight, 200,000 of them, that you counted out there, that we can hear in the background there in Cairo tonight, maintain that, oh, no, you don't attitude and insist one way or another that the state of Egypt has their participation in it is not simply another form of dictatorship.
Well, that's right.
You know, the military, they don't know how to how to run a government.
That's not their thing.
They want to protect their business interests.
They have vast holdings in kitchen farms, real estate.
And I think that's their main concern.
And they want to remain the respected force that it is here.
It's kind of, I wouldn't say depressing, but the fact that the people are relying on the army so much, that they're with their friends, is sad in a way, because that's not all they've got right now to look to.
The police were absolutely despised.
They shot live ammunition and tear gas canisters and rubber bullets and killed close to 400 people, and especially in the three days at the end of January.
Just downstairs from me across the street from this hotel, there's a mosque that could turn into a hospital or a clinic for the wounded.
And I was told by the man who runs this hotel that he could hear doctors, a doctor on a megaphone telling the police to get out because they actually had entered this makeshift clinic and started firing on wounded protesters.
So the police actually apologized the other day, in front of the interior ministry here, to the people, said that they were told to do this.
They were told to steal from the people because they hadn't been paid enough.
So the police have pretty much been marginalized now in terms of keeping order.
There are still civilians directly shot at all over town here.
And it's really up to the army.
I don't think they want to stay in power.
They don't want to rule.
But what exactly happens if the opposition can't get its act together?
If there's too many disagreements, they may have to stay in power for longer than anyone would want.
And there's a possibility that a man like Tan Khaoui, who is the defense minister and now the acting president, basically, of the country, who's, I understand, close to Gates, our defense secretary of the U.S., you know, could emerge as a figure as well if there's disorder.
That's another troubling scenario.
That fellow Nasser basically came to power because they couldn't get it together in two years, and he took over.
But I do think that people have no choice but to believe the military is sincere in wanting to have a transition to civilian government.
It's just way too early to know how this is going to go.
This revolution has just begun.
There's also a lot of support out in the countryside still.
There was for Mubarak.
Nobody knows how they would vote in an election as well.
This whole thing has been—the 200,000 to 300,000 people that are out tonight are the ones that brought down Mubarak, not 80 million people.
So that's another wild card, how the rest of the Egyptians outside of this activist group here, which, again, spans all kinds of people—women and their heads covered and uncovered, religious people, secular people, young and old.
Still, it's a cross-section of Cairo, but not necessarily Egypt.
All right.
Now, a week ago, I talked with Phil Giraldi on the show.
I know you're familiar with him, former CIA and DIA officer and writer for antiwar.com.
And I asked him, did he know what was it that took place between the speech where it was expected that Mubarak was going to quit and then he didn't, and then roughly 24 hours later or 12 hours later or something was the speech by Suleiman saying that Mubarak is, in fact, leaving town.
And Phil said that he had a source inside Egypt that said that they polled the lower-level junior officers throughout the army to ask them would they fire on the protesters.
Mubarak wanted to know whether they would be willing to go along or not.
And they all answered back unanimously that, no, they will not fire on the protesters.
That was when he knew the game was up and that he had to leave.
So it seems like the people, as long as they can keep that sentiment on their side, maybe they could even face down the generals.
That's very interesting.
I didn't know that.
Yes, that's exactly right.
I think the people would go back down the street if the military doesn't come up with the kind of reforms that they're looking for immediately, which will take time.
And you're right.
If the officers won't fire on the people, then the military is stuck.
I don't see them doing that.
I think the United States here played its usual dual policy that has really been in place since the end of the Second World War, which is to both back dictators and publicly call for democracy around the world, to try to export democracy.
Some presidents may be more sincere about that than others, but all of them have been backing dictators from Latin America all the way through, as we know, the Argentine, Galtieri, and Pinochet, and the Shah of Iran, and Marcos.
And they overthrew some democracy, like in Chile and Guatemala, and in Iran, to put in kings, the reversal of 1776.
And that kind of double policy here really angered and confused a lot of Egyptians.
They were looking to the United States to more quickly back people here and not the dictator.
And I think that was what we saw in the Obama administration, which seemed to be that they were veering for one day to the next, changing their policy.
They didn't really know what to do, perhaps, because this dual contradictory foreign policy came to excruciating a head here in Egypt.
And Obama got himself in the vice and really didn't know which way to go.
And underpinning it all was the concern about the treaty with Israel.
The Israelis, and many that I've spoken with, want to see Egyptians have democracy.
It's not that they want people to be repressed, but given the choice, they would prefer 80 million repressed Egyptians to keep in the peace treaty.
And I think that was the real concern for Obama, was whether what could happen in chaos here, whether that treaty could collapse.
And in fact, I don't think that that's going to happen, no matter what happens here.
The military's committed to that treaty, and I think civilian governments would be, too.
I don't think that's the issue here right now.
So if Obama had come down earlier, perhaps it would have been less of a bludgeon here if he had come slowly on the side of the people.
And, you know, it was the Cold War that was the excuse for all of those dictators before, and that was probably another exaggerated threat to the Soviet Union, at least in the early stages of the Cold War.
And here it was the treaty with Israel and other types of economic interests, like in Latin America, to protect American interests that they put and back dictators against people who had been elected, like Allende in Chile, for example.
And I think this is a very, very important moment for American foreign policy to see whether, in fact, if this revolution succeeds, whether in other parts of the Arab world and elsewhere where there are strong men in power, whether, in fact, the U.S. could back off and back off their support for dictators and truly back what they should be doing, which is democracy in these countries.
And it has to be driven, again, by ordinary people, not secular people and moderately religious people.
And I think this big threat of Islamism and extremism is marginalized by these events.
Let's face it.
The people in the square here down the street from me proved that they could overthrow a government and you didn't need al-Qaida and bombs and violence to do it.
That kind of marginalizes the message of al-Qaida and other extremist groups that were saying they were trying to overthrow these American-backed regimes, which have certainly been repressive to Arab people.
It could be done now by ordinary people.
Where would the United States-how could they continue to say we've got to back these guys because the extremists are going to come to power?
That is not what's happening here anyway.
And I think this is not a good day for al-Qaida and other extremists to see ordinary people rising up, taking control of their government, because it shows that maybe their message is really not going to be followed by too many people right now and they don't need that kind of power.
Well, you know, the 1989 analogy isn't perfect, but right now, I mean, there are major protests, the kind big enough to provoke violent crackdowns from Morocco to Malaysia.
And I sort of wonder whether the American empire is going to have a choice in the matter at all.
We can't afford to do, you know, 17 different Mossadegh-style coups in a row, you know, or 17 Iraq-style regime changes either.
Well, let's face it.
The United States would not need to keep strongmen in power if people empower themselves to create democracies.
They could have good relations with the U.S. They could have trade.
They may not get the kind of deals that American corporations have been used to in working with a ruling family and a ruling clique in these countries.
But I wonder if the United States would need these dictators.
Certainly, the American people don't need them.
They never really understood why we've had to back all these guys, especially now that the Cold War is over.
That excuse is completely gone.
And of course, you see double standards everywhere here.
The Iranian regime praising the people down here on the street below my balcony at the same time using brute force against their own protesters.
And the United States wanting to see that regime overthrown, but not for a while this one here in Egypt.
It's all about the people right now.
If they can dictate events, they have dictated them here in Egypt.
You see the rulers on their heels.
Even Obama didn't know what to do, I think.
He was very confused about this because he didn't know which way to go, whether for democracy or just dictatorship.
And we're seeing a man like Mubarak who's now not taking his medicine, who's said to be passing out Sharm El-Sheikh and his powers, wants to die.
A disgrace.
A man who thought the people loved him so much in denial that he was.
It's a really extraordinary moment if you see the most powerful man who took for granted their power on the run, and the United States now having to recalibrate their policy toward this entire region.
It's going to be very, very interesting to see how this continues to play out over the coming months and maybe years.
Yeah, indeed.
Not all these revolutions will be successful right off the bat like in Egypt, but there's certainly a portent of things to come, Joe.
Yeah, I mean, Bahrain is a very interesting situation because there, yeah, the Shiite majority that had been part of Iran at one time, ruling Bahrain, they consider it still a lost province in the same way that Saddam thought Kuwait was a lost province.
And the United States has its fifth fleet in Bahrain, which is very important in containment of Iran.
And they can't lose that.
They may not be able to go somewhere else very easily.
So this is a really tough one for Obama.
Can he see the police in Bahrain going to a peaceful camp in the middle of the night and killing people and now shooting others?
Today, they were marching from their funeral back to the city of Marmar to Feral Square, and watched them start getting slaughtered because the U.S. wanted to keep a fleet there.
And they're afraid that if Shia, who are about 70 percent of the country, come to power, they were very likely to be standing with Iran.
Iran would become a dominant power in Bahrain.
So again, do you support a repressive ruler because you want to keep the Iranians out of there?
Or do you back the people and stop the shooting and try to stop the shooting?
I mean, the United States is the most powerful country, but sometimes it's limited in what it can do.
Here, I think in Egypt, they could have early on said, we're cutting the money off if you don't stop firing on the people.
I don't know if that happened behind the scenes, if that had anything to do with Mubarak going.
I've never heard that.
So, you know, this is all guesswork at this point.
But you could see the confusion and the conflict of policy, the choices that have to be made here.
But right now, in this street anyway, people are ruling.
Yeah.
OK, well, and let's end with that, Joe.
Can you tell us a little bit more?
Just report live to us from Tahrir Square.
What's happening there?
Well, I'm standing on a street, Tahrir Street, actually, right into the square.
And I could see all the way down towards the Al-Safiyah Bridge.
And it's just a sea of humanity right now with a lot of Egyptian flags being laid, fireworks being shot at the crowds, people dancing here in circles along the street, men standing with microphones, making impromptu political speeches, everyone listening very attentively to them.
And then it's time for someone else to make a speech.
It is an extraordinary sight.
You know, when I see an Egyptian former who was ashamed to be an Egyptian and now he's proud of the flag, I was reminded of in the 60s during the after-war demonstrations in America, some protesters used the American flag to tell the American elite that it was their flag, the American people's flag, not the elite running this unpopular war.
That's the kind of spirit we see here.
They're just in love with the flag because it means that some people have taken over.
Now, that is the moment, that is the excitement now that all that we've just talked about, all these questions about where we go from here, you know, those are very serious of us because they are celebrating, getting rid of the bars, and being free to speak their minds right now at the state newspaper.
There was a press conference yesterday with journalists in the paper wanting their editor to be fired, the one who had taken all those orders from Obama's cronies.
And now he's still in charge, and he's just changed his tune to doing whatever the military says.
So this kind of a change at the state newspaper, for journalists, it would have been absolutely unthinkable.
Two weeks ago, this gathering below my windows here would have been unthinkable.
And so I think they have a right, and they're definitely exercising it now to celebrate their victory, but there's some very, very difficult days ahead here in Egypt, and there's other regions we've been talking about.
All right.
Well, Joe, I can't tell you how much I appreciate your time on my show today.
No problem.
Anytime, Scott.
All right, everybody.
That is the hero, Joe Lauria, reporting live from Cairo, from Tahrir Square, half a block off of Tahrir Square.
That's the noise in the background, massive celebration, couple of hundred thousand people out there marking the first week of many of their lives without Mubarak.
