Obama Caught Off Guard

The result in Cairo was not what was expected at the White House. Just yesterday morning, it really seemed that Hosni Mubarak was going away. His speech was expected, planned for that night and Leon Panetta, the chief of the CIA, predicted to President Obama that Mubarak was leaving and ceding the power to his number two Suleiman. So Obama was moved to say that, in Egypt, “we are witnessing history unfold,” promising that “America will continue to do everything that we can to support an orderly and genuine transition to democracy.” Words spent before Mubarak’s speech, which Obama followed aboard Air Force One, while returning from Michigan.

Is this another blunder by the Central Intelligence Agency, which is already under criticism by the White House for having underestimated the Egyptian crisis? It would appear so since Mubarak disposed of part of his powers but still stands. Rumors that the military would have pushed him to leave and the news that confirmed Suleiman’s inheritance were denied by Mubarak in his speech to the nation. On the other hand, while U.S. television networks gave the shift for sure, the White House was careful: “I think we’ve been clear in the many preceding days that what we have wanted to see and most importantly what the people of Egypt wanted to see was irreversible change, and we’ll monitor throughout the day what is happening today. …We’re watching, I think, a very fluid situation.” So said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, just before Mubarak’s speech.

It is not clear how the situation has developed behind the scenes since it seemed that the Egyptian president was going to leave, until the speech of the night in which he said that he would remain in order “to facilitate the transition,” while confirming a transfer of executive powers to the vice-president Suleiman. According to White House sources, it seemed that the military wanted to take the situation into their own hands, to beoame the guarantors of the change. Nevertheless, a transfer of power from civilian to military authorities, despite the many assurances (we will avoid the Muslim Brotherhood, we will control both the former regime and the square), sounded like a takeover: “Protection is different from control. A seizure of power by the military and Suleiman’s possible departure, as well as Mubarak’s, did not sound good, or rather, sounded like a takeover and so an even more alarming development of the persistence of a downsized position for Mubarak,” stated a White House source to Sole 24 Ore.

Now the situation heads back to the starting point. However, the words of Obama and the conditions which Gibbs alluded to let us think that — as Mubarak announced — the launching of a constitutional reform, in its main parts, especially for electoral rules, constitutes the platform on which to build the “irreversible change” that the White House requested. Obama, as soon as he got back from Michigan, immediately called the National Security Council. Until late that night there were no further official statements. Waiting for events, especially those in the square, a curtain of silence has fallen over Washington.