The reports at Bens link with people cowering in a hotel hoping protesters didn't get in and wondering where the cops were conjured images of the US embassy in Tehran ca. 1979. I'm not denying Mubarak and his state apparati are a bunch of thugs; note the subject line of my first post in this thread. What I'm saying is that if the "democratic" protesters include the same elements that murdered foreign tourists at the pyramids a few years ago and celebrated Christmas by blowing up a church less than a month ago it doesn't seem like democracy, except in the loosest sense, has a dog in this fight.

Democracy has to mean more than just lip service to free expression and accepting whatever got 51% in the last nominally free election, however reprehensible the victor may be. The one thing I've learned from observing US foreign relations both in my life time and historically is, as you've heard me say may times, that the trouble with free elections is: They're free. If civil rights, freedom of expression and personal safety being foremost, aren't respected people can "democratically" sanction anything from slavery to genocide, and the proof is how often majorities have done just that. It's their country and not our place to dictate to them; respect for self determination requires that as much as it requires free speech for ones own citizens, but if that's what's on the table, Mubaraks authoritarian regime preventing sectarian slaughter in the streets is preferable to a different authoritarian regime encouraging and choosing sides in it. That's the difference between peaceful protests and throwing Molotov cocktails at police.