Mubarak Losing Face, Protests Continue

I think we Americans need to understand a basic concept, expressed as honor in the Middle East and as 'face' in the Far East, as in 'saving face' or 'losing face'.  We Americans have no definitive cultural expression for this, just a general knowledge on whether someone is respected or not.

But for these other countries, it is so deeply embedded in their culture that it can cause someone to go to great extremes that are even self destructive, just to preserve their honor or save face, even at the expense of a whole people.  By our standards, it is expressly stupid, yet by their standards, it can even be expected.

A good example is the second original Karate Kid movie,,,if you recall that one, there was a great emphasis placed on Myagi's friend losing face just because he did not face him in a battle.  We don't truly understand the depth of the importance of that, because it simply does not apply in our culture. But it does apply in the cultures of other countries, even to the point of death.

This is where real diplomacy comes into play, understanding what motivates others based upon their beliefs, not yours, and trying to work with those others in respect of their culture, because we cannot force the world to act according to our own cultural beliefs. 

Mubarak has lost face.  He is humiliated.  If you watched the reaction of the protestors the night he aired his speech stating he would leave in September, and saw them take off their shoes and wave the bottom of their shoes at that screen in anger, you were watching him being dishonored to a level we cannot really understand unless you step outside of American culture and view from their cultural view.

It was the equivalent, I'd say, of a million plus Americans dropping their drawers and mooning an American president. 

It did not help that his own goon squads that included a large number of criminals along with police out of uniform that were set loose on the protestors to disrupt the protests also attacked the journalists, something that was documented for the whole world to see and that turned a lot of people against Mubarak.

I think they may have expected that the attacks would scatter the protestors and end the protests, but it backfired on them, in a huge way.  If anything, it strengthened their resolve to keep taking their stand for democracy and for Mubarak to leave.

At least the violence has died down, limited more to skirmishes on the side streets, and the military is trying with a bit more effort to limit the confrontations.  But it is still up in the air on how this will end, how long it will go on, and how strong the resolve is of the protestors to stick it out.