What an amazing couple of weeks in Egypt.
The seemingly unmoveable Mubarak regime has gone. A regime not only brutal in the way it usually treated dissent and which had all-but destroyed any organised opposition but which was, let's not forget, also supported and propped up by the West.
In spite of all that a largely peaceful mass uprising by the people has removed them.
Amazing.
While it is a people's revolution the critical part the military played in the revolution should be acknowledged. Surprisingly to me they stood by and let the revolution take its course.
It was a big dipper of a revolution and it was touch and go there for a while.
It looks to me as though the original thinking of the regime was that it would fizzle out afer a few days, so they did nothing.
Then they tried to show that chaos would be the result by loosing off some thuggish 'supporters' to create violence.
By and large, and to their credit, the crowd didn't resort to retaliation with violence and the chaos the regime wanted didn't really happen.
The numbers waxed and waned, but calls for 'million people' demonstrations boosted the numbers again.
It was touch and go on Thursday when Mubarak was expected to resign by just about everyone but didn't.
If there was going to be a violent reaction, the disappointment at that point was going to ignite it.
Again to their credit, the people were restrained but determined.
There are lessons in it too for American foreign policy makers and their western allies, not that they've ever learned from their mistakes in the past though.
Once again they've been supporting a brutal, undemocratic dictator hated by his people.
And think about Iraq & Afghanistan - you can't impose a political system on people, the people themselves have to do it.
As the Egyptians have so wonderfully shown.