A large demonstration is planned for tomorrow, Friday, in front of the U.S. embassy in Cairo but, as you can see on Al Jazeera’s live streaming video,
protesters are gathered today, too. The police have established their
position at some distance from the crowd, as well as the embassy, and
are fitfully tossing rocks and firing tear-gas canisters to keep that
broad passage between themselves and the crowd clear. In effect, these
are the only defenses the police have against a mob that might otherwise
tear them to pieces, because they’re not going to fire their weapons,
not today to protect themselves and almost certainly not tomorrow either
if they have to protect Americans.
An
Egyptian president from the Muslim Brotherhood is not going to give the
order to shoot at demonstrators in front of the American embassy who
are supporting what has been ardently marketed as a Muslim
cause—protests against a film insulting the prophet of Islam. Without
Mohamed Morsi providing the police with cover, the police know they’re
vulnerable, not only to the mob but a court system that has prosecuted
and jailed policemen for their actions during the uprising that brought
down Hosni Mubarak. The protesters know all this, especially the history
of the revolution and the various battles pitting the cops against the
revolutionaries, because most of the demonstrators that were gathered
today in front of the embassy are those same revolutionaries.
While the evening crowds, including women, are now
milling leisurely around in front of the embassy, during the day there
were few beards among the mob that would indicate an Islamist presence.
Instead, the majority of the protesters were clean-shaven young men,
from their teens to the twenties, the same cadre that gave the
revolution much of its shock troops.
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