The military, not Mubarak, was Egyptians’ real enemy

The military, not Mubarak, was Egyptians’ real enemy
By Lee Smith, Published: February 3

Aside from Egypt, perhaps no place in the world was more galvanized by the events in Cairo’s Tahrir Square last year than Washington. American policymakers and foreign policy experts on both sides of the aisle rallied behind the cause of the young men and women who braved violence at the hands of the country’s notoriously vicious state police to march for freedom.
The Obama administration saw its defense of the revolutionaries, and its eventual demand that Hosni Mubarak step down, as a fulfillment of the promise the president made in his June 2009 Cairo speech — that he and the United States would stand alongside young Muslims, supporting their best dreams and highest aspirations. Officials from the previous White House saw the revolution as a vindication of George W. Bush’s freedom agenda and the comeuppance of a despot who stood in the way of his people’s hopes.