Horror story from Cairo

 Lara Logan, moments before she was attacked in Tahrir Square

This story isn't getting much airplay, perhaps at the request of the family of CBS reporter Lara Logan.

Lara Logan, the CBS News correspondent, was attacked and sexually assaulted by a mob in Cairo on Feb. 11, the day that the Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was forced from power, the network said Tuesday.

After the mob surrounded her, Ms. Logan “suffered a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating before being saved by a group of women and an estimated 20 Egyptian soldiers,” the network said in a statement. Ms. Logan is recovering at a hospital in the United States.

The evening of the attack, Ms. Logan, 39, the network’s chief foreign affairs correspondent, was covering the celebrations in Tahrir Square in central Cairo with a camera crew and an unknown number of security staff members. The CBS team was enveloped by “a dangerous element” within the crowd, CBS said, that numbered more than 200 people. That mob separated Ms. Logan from her team and then attacked her.

Once she was rescued, CBS said she “reconnected” with the team and returned to the United States on Feb. 12.

The CBS statement mentioned nothing more about the attackers. It also said that there would be “no further comment from CBS News, and correspondent Logan and her family respectfully request privacy at this time.”

This is a horrible story, evoking grim images.  I'm sure I don't want to know the details of the attack.  To be isolated and attacked by a savage, insane gang --it's an image to match anything that might be conjured by Cormac McCarthy or Edgar Allen Poe. 

When I first learned of the story, I was sickened.  It seemed a stain so ugly as to irreparably mar the triumph that Egyptians (indeed, the entire world) enjoy in the wake of the largely bloodless overthrow of a corrupt government.

But, then, I was struck by a horrifying realization:  What happened to Lara Logan in Cairo, might happen to anyone, anywhere, at any time.

• Queens, New York, 1964 
• Manhattan, New York, 1989
• St. Paul, Minnesota, 2007
• Richmond, California, 2009

Thank God for the women and soldiers who came to Ms. Logan's rescue.

Ours is a feverish world.

Hosni Mubarak bids farewell to Cairo

 Hosni Mubarak's Cairo

The news this morning is that Egyptian president/strongman Hosni Mubarak has abdicated power and left Cairo in deference to massive demonstrations by the Egyptian people.

Got me to thinking...

Put aside, for a moment, all the legitimate complaints of corruption and human rights abuses leveled against his government and consider (just for a moment, mind you) the person of Hosni Mubarak.

Mubarak assumed the presidency of Egypt as the result of a horrifying political catastrophe.  For 30 years, longer than most Egyptians have been alive, he has been at the top of the Byzantine Egyptian political system.  And, in spite of his heavy-handedness and corruption, I have to believe he loves, always has loved, Egypt and its people and its ancient, mysterious city, Cairo.

I wonder, how it must have been for Mubarak, at 82 years of age, to look out the window of the plane this morning as he left Cairo for the last time?  To be exiled from his home?  To be detested by his own people?

Dade Cariaga's Portland

Were I to imagine myself, some 30 years from now, exiled from Portland, from Oregon, taking with me only the contempt of my Oregon brethren...

It would be a terrible fate.  I don't think I would survive it.

What must it be like for Hosni Mubarak?

End of the road for Hosni Mubarak?

Mr. Mubarak, it appears that the time has come...

All eyes are on Egypt.

The people have taken to the streets, demanding governmental reform and the abdication of power by President Hosni Mubarak, who has been at the top of the Egyptian power structure for nigh on 30 years.

It is hard to imagine how Mubarak can survive the upheaval, politically.  The demonstrators who are paralyzing the streets of Cairo, Alexandria, and Suez have only one clear demand:  Mubarak must go.

I remember well when I first learned Mubarak's name.  It was back in 1981, in the period following the historic Camp David Accords, brokered by President Carter, between Egypt and Israel.  Egypt's president at the time, Anwar el-Sadat, was a hero to many Americans for being the first leader of an Arab nation to make peace with Israel.  But Sadat's popularity in the United States meant nothing to extremists in his own country. To them, he was a quisling who betrayed the Palestinians.

Radical members of the Egyptian military conducted a bold assassination of Sadat during a military parade, firing into the presidential viewing stands.  In the confusion that followed, Hosni Mubarak emerged as a leader.  He was wounded in the gun play around the assassination, but managed to escape.  He was later sighted giving orders to military personnel, taking charge of the government.

Again, that was in 1981.  But watching the news this weekend, I heard an astonishing fact.  The median age of the population of Egypt, all ~80 million of them, is 24 years.  They are a nation of young people, most of whom have never known any leader other than Hosni Mubarak.  They have no recollection, nor perhaps appreciation of the contrast between today's Egypt and the bitterly anti-Western Egypt that sought to destroy Israel and played footsie with the Soviet Union in the Cold War chess match.

I'm not defending Mubarak.  This is an Egyptian matter.  Egyptians need to sort it out for themselves. Mubarak's record on human rights is appalling and his government is thoroughly corrupt.

I believe the United States is best served by playing it exactly as President Obama is doing:  expressing support for the people, warning against violence, offering assistance when possible.  Remember, Egypt is the recipient of $1.15 billion per year in foreign aid, so Egyptians have a very big interest in maintaining good relations with the United States.

It seems clear that Mubarak's time is up.  All that is left to him is to determine whether his story ends with relative calm or in an eruption of violence and bloodshed.