Time is running out for the Egyptian revolution. It is clear that Mubarak will not leave the country just because the population takes it to the streets.
No matter which popular protest or revolution or even coup attempt is considered, the decisive moments tend to have a certain degree of violence and necessary forcefulness, usually directed at public buildings and/or institutions. So it should not come as a surprise that Milosevic was only ousted from power in Yugoslavia after the parliament was stormed by the population. Just as similar events were what led to Shevardnadze fleeing Georgia and the list could go on and on to other revolutions whether they are recent like the Ukranian one, or from another generation like the October Revolution of 1917. Even if one considers the August 1991 coup where it was the army that took to the streets, they failed because at the decisive moment, they did not take over any of the public buildings as instructed by their leaders.
At this point the Egyptian opposition must decide between taking the risk or storming into a few buildings that are symbols of the old power and literally letting the power fall into the streets, or slowly let the anger fade away and allow the current protest to take a similar course to that in Iran which, by the way, failed exactly for the same inaction at the decisive moment.
The decisive moment has come to Egypt and the time is running out because motivation and psychology are nasty little beasts and if the next few days become increasingly uneventful, like today will likely be, then it will alredy be too late for anything to actually change.
If I had to guess I would say that unless either some sectors of the military openly change sides or the population manages to storm some key government buildings in Cairo with or without some degree of indifference from the military within the next 3 to 4 days, they all might as well go home and forget about it. And tomorrow when the population is being called to strike and go to the streets en masse would actually be the ideal day to take this critical step.
As for the aftermath, I guess we can all start accepting that a successful revolution will mean a temporary government which will include the Brotherhood and other movements with money trails undoubtedly linking them to terrorism. But that should not be enough reason to fear the pro-democracy movement as a whole. If the interest in democracy does not fade, the anti-west groups will be marginalized within the year.
And the USA should know and realize that better than anyone. In a full fledged Cold War they had to deal with one of the 12 NATO member countries at the time being rulled by a communist party of Stalinist inspiration and it turned out fine once the first elections were held and the radicals faded away. So there will be nothing new to see there in that respect. Besides, the invasion of Iraq was partly justified as being a percursor for democracy in the Middle East. Well, it was not. But at least they should let Egypt show how it is done.
