Egypt

The trouble with rebellion or revolution is, you never know the outcome, and whether you'll be any better off, or whether it will even backfire and you'll be worse off.

I'm old enough to remember how the Chinese put down their rebellion, mowing down students in the Square, and afterwards imprisoning many people.

I'm old enough to remember marching on the day of the "Vietnam Moratorium", only to realize, before the end of the day, that it had not been a spontaneous demonstration, but was being led, and had been organized by, local Marxists. (So I went straight home.)

I'm even old enough to remember how delighted Americans were when that dashing, charming young Fidel liberated Cuba from the nasty old dictator, Battista. Yeah, right. That was before any of us knew he was a Communist.

So I can foresee several undesirable outcomes, from the point of view of the Egyptian people. What if it turns out Islamists are really behind this current uprising, and they take over afterwards? Or what if the government ends the rebellion with large-scale slaughter? Or what if the current American puppet simply is replaced by another American puppet like Mohammed el Baradei, so nothing changes but the face and the name?

There are, of course, even worse possibilities if you look at it strictly from the point of view of American interests - namely, that a genuine Egyptian patriot will take office, a good guy not an Islamist, but who is not an American puppet. What will be his policy toward Israel? Oil? And if one American puppet falls, will there be a domino effect, causing others to fall within a few short years, as the Soviet Union's puppets did?