Surprise, we’re back!

Nothing I could think of illustrates the background to yesterday’s surprise return of demonstrators en masse better than these two interviews. Here is Wael Ghonim, Google exec and protest promoter/organizer, reacting yesterday to an anchor’s showing of photos of those who died in the demonstrations:

And here is Vice President Omar Suleiman two days earlier, accusing the protesters of being under foreign influence and shilling for religion (but caveat emptor: ABC has disabled the embed code, so clicking here will take you to the Youtube website):

Egyptians made their preference known with the appearance in Tahir square of the biggest crowd yet, one that revived the protests and the calls for President Mubarak to step down. Leaderless no more, the dramatic support for Ghonim will slow Suleiman’s effort to steer the negotiations in a direction that leaves the regime largely intact. So, too, will the spread of labor unrest, a clear sign of the broadening base of the protests in Egypt (as it has been in other conflicts of this sort).

Even cold-hearted Washington has been moved by this contrast. The last few days the Obama Administration was tilting towards an orderly transition, yesterday they were back on a quick and decisive one. Their vacillations are understandable–American administrations don’t often risk their vital interests in Middle East peace and the fight against terrorism by betting on scruffy young people–but there is just as much risk in betting on Mubarak, who in any event will not be around for long, or on Suleiman, who will do his best to maintain an autocratic regime to which he has devoted his entire life.  This point is well and forecefully made in Tom Gjelten’s piece this morning on NPR.

It is hard to keep protests going against a regime as wily and survival-focused as this one–yesterday it was busy raising public sector salaries, among other things, to try to calm the populace. But nothing has happened so far that guarantees that the movement towards democracy is irreversible. The protesters will have to keep it up a while longer.