In one of the better pieces I’ve seen, Christiane Amanpour leads a worthwhile discussion on This Week with journalists who cover the Middle East, talking about the dangers of democracy in a movement with no clear leadership. The BBC’s John Simpson expressed concern that the Muslim Brotherhood could rise to power in that vacuum, just as they did in Iran after their revolution. He also said most people understood the U.S. was more interested in stability in the region than democracy:

Veteran Egyptian journalist Nadia abou el-Magd said it comes down to the protesters. “They that made revolution and they are in the position to impose their conditions,” said el-Magd, who works for the newspaper Al-Ahram and The Associated Press. “They don’t see that … anybody else is in a position to impose their conditions on them.”

Egyptian journalist Lamia Radi said the protestors “will try to stay as long as they can,” but, she warned, there is “mounting pressure from the people who want to be back to business [and] … the sympathy is waning a little bit, especially among the people.

“But, of course, no one wants to give up. They know they have done something unprecedented in this area, in this region, especially in Egypt where you have been under a dictatorship for maybe 7,000 years now,” said Radi, who works for the newswire Agence France Presse and the newspaper Al-Shorouk.
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