When the dictator who ruled your country for three decades dies, it is like the death of a long-time abuser. You don’t mourn the abuser — you mourn the versions of yourself that might have existed without him. google.com/amp/s/www.poli…
Mubarak didn’t just steal Egyptians’ wealth with rampant corruption; he stole our ability to imagine. He wasted our time, and so many of our years. He died in February at the age of 91, a free & rich man who spent 30yrs of his life stealing from, torturing & holding Egypt captive
Mubarak’s 30-year rule of Egypt spanned five U.S. presidents, Democrats and Republicans, each happy to prop him up with arms and billions of dollars in aid to Egypt, all the while insisting that we Egyptians liked our leader to be iron-fisted because he brought us stability.
It was classic gaslighting — the equivalent of your abuser’s friends mansplaining your abuse to you, while insisting that your abuser is good for you. Mubarak spent 30 years consolidating a regime that continues to steal from, torture and hold Egypt captive.
Yet outgoing U.S. President Donald Trump reportedly has called Sisi “my favorite dictator.” President-elect Joe Biden said in a PBS interview in the middle of our revolution in 2011, “Mubarak has been an ally of ours in a number of things…I would not refer to him as a dictator”
I was 14 when Mubarak became president in 1981, and 44 when an 18-day revolution forced him out on Feb. 11, 2011. Since I had become a journalist in 1989, Mubarak regime crimes had become as familiar to me as the sound of the dictator’s voice. I wrote this google.com/amp/s/www.poli…
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