CAIRO — With the barrels of American-designed tanks pointing at them, American-backed air power circling overhead, and a longtime American client still sitting in the presidential palace, the protesters in Tahrir Square are starting to get frisky.
“No Kentucky! No Kentucky! No Kentucky!” went their chant, using local slang for the Kentucky Fried Chicken chain as a call to arms against all American goods, as well as a call for the U.S. to take a clearer stand in favor of their struggle for an Egyptian democracy.
A background hum of anti-American feeling drifts through the square, where thousands of demonstrators gathered yet again Monday to express their opposition to President Hosni Mubarak.
Bilal Mohamed, a 24-year-old doctor, said he can’t figure out why Washington hasn’t endorsed the demonstrators’ demand that Mubarak leave.
“What are you thinking about us?” he asked, incredulously. “We are speaking about our rights. You must be clear. Being midway is no good.”
The demonstrators point out that when President Barack Obama was here 18 months ago he talked about democracy in this part of the world. They also say that much of the American assistance given to the Mubarak regime has gone toward their oppression, starting with all that military hardware being brandished against them. They argue that the U.S. hasn’t gotten a good return on its assistance.
“Don’t gamble on a leader — put your money on the people,” said Lotfy Abdul-Mageed, another doctor.
The fluctuations in Obama-administration policy toward Mubarak over the past week were barely noticed in Tahrir Square. Protesters felt Washington wasn’t doing enough, no matter what it said. When Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned Monday against Mubarak leaving too hastily, demonstrators felt she was finally being honest about American intentions.
What particularly annoys people here is the American focus on the Muslim Brotherhood, the best organized and largest opposition group, and its desire to remake Egypt into a more thoroughly Islamic country. In the eyes of demonstrators, the American attention to the Brotherhood is a misplaced obsession.
“This is a revolution of the people. It’s not a revolution of the Muslim Brotherhood,” said Mahmoud Saad Ibrahim. The Brotherhood has not played a leading role in the uprising; Ibrahim and others doubt that it can snatch the fruits of the revolution away from those who have been on the square day after day, if and when they emerge victorious. They say it just doesn’t have that much support throughout Egyptian society.
“Everybody’s afraid of Egypt turning out like Iran,” said one demonstrator who did not want to be identified. “Why would Egypt turn out like Iran?”
