Hosni Mubarak, Egyptian Leader Ousted in Arab Spring, Dies at 91

As always, when he writes about Egypt, Michael Slickman tried to present a distorted image of an Egyptian Arab leader who had a positive role in achieving peace and stability in a troubled region. Slackman, he only saw Mubarak in 2011. Slackman reads the events from his very narrow angle, and he knows nothing about the thinking and logic of the Egyptians. Slackman continues to violate the feelings and emotions of the Egyptians. We sincerely invite him to take into account the feelings of the Egyptians when they lose a loved one.

Rest in peace Mubarak, the fighter and leader. we will always remember you. we will remember the soldier who led the country safely in a troubled region, We will remember you in every city you built: New Cairo, Tenth of Ramadan, Shorouk, Sixth of Actor, New Borg El Arab, Sadat City, and we will remember you when we ride the subway, and when we use the basic infrastructure for communications, electricity, sanitation and water. We will remember your great works. We will never forget that you were the first to hold competitive elections in Egypt's 7,000-year history. Rest in peace, hero.

We were taught to only mention the Good Deeds , of the recently departed. But I find myself at a Loss for Words, since I have nothing Good to say about this man. The Egypt that Mr. Mubarak inherited, was much Better-Off than the one he has left behind.

Mubarak's wife, Suzanne, joined her husband in a long fight against female genital mutilation (FGM). It was eventually banned. There is a possibility that a major reason for the unpopularity of Mubarak was his war against FGM.

"Life in Mr. Mubarak’s Egypt deteriorated. The World Economic Forum ranked Egypt 124th of 133 countries for the quality of its primary education system." This would be a good discussion-starter for a high school logic class. Or for research by a high school civics class.

Too many words about a man who did little or nothing for Egypt.

Salute to Mubarak, Ghadafi, the Shah, Mossadegh, Saddam, Assad, Abdullah Saleh, bin Ali,... the "Arab Spring" was nothing than another series of coups that brought hunger, homelessness, terror and pain to people in North Africa and West Asia. Nothing but a C.I.A. scheme! Never did democracy come nor will it through coups that have been invested for in the billions. Shame on those thugs who call themselves protesters.

Just about the best thing you can say about Mubarak: After 30 years in power, he left Egypt in 2011 in better shape than Mobutu left Zaire (now the DRC) in 1997 after 32 years in power. In other words, not much good at all to say about Mubarak. British imperialism was of no great help, but Egypt's troubles in the modern era really began when its leaders and people became violently opposed to Israel's establishment in the late 1940s. When tens of millions of people in a country get whipped up into a hysterical frenzy at the thought of seeing a neighboring country get destroyed, nothing good will result. Nobody will bother establishing internationally competitive businesses, nobody will care much for the value of education, and so forth. I'm not sure what Mubarak could have done about that problem after taking power in 1981. Egypt's peace with Israel has always been a deeply negative peace, and it makes achieving progress on other fronts difficult if not impossible. For all the problems in East Asia, there are lessons to be learned when looking at how people in nations like South Korea and China channeled their antagonism towards Japan into productive activities that ultimately (in the late 20th century) began generating huge amounts of wealth and lifting living standards for everybody. Remember, South Korea was likely poorer than Egypt on a per person basis following the end of the Korean War in 1953.

Thanks for the description of Mubarak's life. Like many of the articles in the NY Times, I find it to be somewhat slanted. Egypt has a population of about 100 million, a population which has almost doubled since 1990. At its current rate of growth, every school must be replaced by two schools every 30 years. Every hospital must be replaced by two every thirty years. This population is concentrated in a narrow strip of green along the Nile and in the Nile Delta. Demographic facts such as these are seldom mentioned in NY Times articles. But they explain why democracy failed during the Arab Spring failed in 2011. I was in Egypt in 2009, I stayed in a hotel about a block from Tahrir Square. I was appalled at the bone-crushing poverty I saw. The Arab Spring was one of Obama's failures, and Hillary Clinton bore part of the blame. Obama pushed for democracy in Egypt, in Libya, in Syria. But overpopulation made genuine democracy impossible. The people are simply trying to survive and are easily influenced by religious extremists. In Egypt it was Morsi who pushed the Islamic faith for a few years, only to be replaced by el-Sisi. Is Egypt better off? Clearly no. The US seems to believe that merely copying US democracy will cure all problems in the third world. That is chauvinistic. Egypt has history going back 5000 years compared to the US democracy going back 230 years. We should treat it with respect. And we should give it free access to family planning.

Mubarak, along with so many other dictators on the African continent, Mobutu for example, were US 'gifts". Or in the Caribbean, Duvalier, or Central America, Somoza; Diem in Vietnam; Marcos and the list of large and small US-created murderers is long.

Like Gamal abd el-Nasser, Anwar el-Sadat and Abdel Fatah el-Sisi, Mubarak jailed many political prisoners. Some commenters seem to have forgotten than Sadat jailed many and confined the Egyptian Pope to an obscure monastery. When Sadat was rounding up political prisoners, one of my relatives told us on a call from Egypt that both her sons were safe with her in Cairo, and we knew not to ask about her third son due to government spying. We later learned that he had escaped to another city, avoiding arrest. When Sadat was killed, he received justice. Unfortunately, like Nasser and el-Sisi, Mubarak has not.

Everyone conveniently forgets that Mubarak became an accidental president after Anwar Sadat was assassinated. For those bloggers who are so dismissive of Mubarak I'd like to point out that his biggest accomplishment is that he kept the peace with Israel.

Unfortunately, nothing has changed since his ousting. In fact, life in Egypt has gotten progressively worse. As the morally right citizens of Egypt and concerned persons across the world weather the storm of the modern day “pharaoh” in office today... One can only hope his reign is as swift as it is corrupt.

I propose a slightly different title for the video. Instead of "Hosni Mubarak's legacy of forced stability" I offer "Hosni Mubarak's legacy of total complicity in US-forced policy of US-designed brutal dictatorship so long as US-imposed interests are kept alive and US-engineered chaos in the Middle East continues, in exchange for US-originated billions of US Dollars, many of them falling directly in Mr Mubarak's blood-soaked pockets." And think of the advantages: when al-Sisi dies, just change Hosni Mubarak with al-Sisi and you already have The Title & The Video.

Through it all, Mubarak remained the best worldwide spokesman for Grecian Formula.

I will always remember Hosni Mubarak for his statement when the U.S.-led Iraq war was started by Bush in 2003. This will would produce "100 new bin Ladens, driving more Muslims to anti-Western militancy". What happened after that? Just what he predicted except it was not 100s it was 1000s and 1000s. Hosni will certainly be remembered more than any pharoah as a leader who protected the peace treaty made by his predecessor Sadat and Begin of Israel. He also had gained the trust of US presidents from Reagan to Obama. Never afraid to tell the west when they made a blunder. We all agree that the colossal blunder of the Bush admin. in initiating a war in Iraq will remain the worst in this century. It destabilized the ME more than ever before, resulted in the loss of over 6000 brave US defense forces and close to a million civilian deaths and 1000s of US troops who came home losing critical functions. If only Mubarak's word's sunk into the thick skulls of the bipartisan DC politicians we would be talking about a different world. A world without the barbaric Baghdadi and ISIS. A world without Suleimani and his IEDs and missiles and US tax payers not losing trillions on futile regime change wars. Mubarak, Arabic equivalent in meaning of the Latinate word "Benedict" (from Benedictus "blessed" or, literally, "well-spoken"). Mubarak Ho Hosni. May Allah have mercy on your soul. After all the hype of the Arab spring and fight for democracy what did Eygpt get? The late Mohamed Morsi.

Mubarak thwarted Egypt's potential and development for decades while he, his family and his cohort of thieves amassed pharaonic fortunes, much of it American aid syphoned into their hands while poverty ground down the will and desire of the people, until the Arab Spring. Would that life in Egypt had improved for the brave souls who finally found the strength to overpower the pharaoh. Alas, yet another pharaoh now presides.

This was a really well written obituary/ mini biography. I like the way the author described the man in the context of his country and the impact of his leadership (or lack there of). Thanks. I learned something before 9AM today!

Visiting Egypt in 2000, I remember the beauty and majesty of the monuments but mostly the warmth of the Egyptian people despite the grinding poverty they daily endured. Emaciated children selling pitiful dolls by the roadside in many, many locations. In the middle of nowhere, an old woman charging us to use a hole in the ground behind a screen in which to urinate and the little extra money charged if we needed small squares of toilet paper. Everywhere, people selling the poorest of things to make any amount of money. It was shocking because I had never seen poverty like that. I remember thinking this place is a powered keg. Poverty and oppression, if you haven't seen it at that level firsthand, will knock the air out of you.

“Mubarak had no particular vision and no noted achievement,” said Mr. Salama, of the newspaper Shorouk. “Everything he did was to maintain the status quo, even without trying to improve it to any degree. His contribution toward the endemic problems that Egypt suffers from, like illiteracy, poverty and disease, was minimal.” ....and he helped move Egyptian society to become far more religious. What an Egyptian disaster.

Funny how this article ignores the fact that America, under Obama, gave its blessing to the military overthrow of the Egyptian government democratically elected as a result of the Arab spring. I guess democracy is only good when the candidate the Americans want to win wins.

When looking at Hosni Mubarak’s fall we should ask ourselves a simple question. Is Egypt better off now than before the uprising and his lose of power. I don’t ask this because of any special love for Mubarak or any authoritarian ruler. I ask it because the history of the fall of such men and the power structures within societies that supported them are producing outcomes often worse than the status quo. How is the world & Libya better because Gaddafi was overthrown? How is the strife and chaos that remains behind better? The same certainly can be said of Syria’s Assad and the disastrous civil war that has killed unknown numbers of innocents while contributing to the destabilization of the region brought on by our foolish and poorly executed war in Iraq. How is anything “better” from all the violence and destruction brought on by all this conflict? I don’t have good answers for this question, only more questions. I do know that these men and the repressive societies they represent must be addressed. But is force and violence the answer. I suggest looking at recent history indicates otherwise. We need better answers, soon.

30 years of autocracy without vision, strategy or a tactical plan, continuing the country’s tragic slide further into corruption, poverty, aimlessness, dysfunction, irrelevance. Egypt’s greatest tragedy since 1952 is it’s lost potential. It will be up to a new generation, perhaps not yet born, to pick up the pieces and build a society that Egyptians deserve.

I spent 2 1/2 weeks touring Egypt from Alexandria to Abu Simbel a year before Tahrir Square. When Mubarak and company moved as Egypt fought to win the African FIFA Cup we were accompanied by armed security everywhere while his state security people at the monuments asked for money. Crossing the street while walking was a life- threatening terrifying expedition. Going down the Nile River exposed income inequality on par with the Age of Pharaohs.

Strength to Egyptians for their bravery and action. Now comes the hard part.