Throughout history, dictators have had a hard time of it in at least one way: There is no security for them, no peaceful sleep really, no true protection other than iron-fist reaction to uprisings.
A dictator traditionally, as in the case of the Romanovs, Joseph Stalin, various European Emperors, and others who left the populace to rot, had to fear
— the people they set their military presence down upon, (no mother will ever forget a harm to her kin, no father will ever forget, no child will ever forget his or her witness to vileness and violence… my father, from the Old Country, used to say forgetting such things sent by kings against the people would not be forgotten until the 7th generation of the 7th generation… so bound to blood memory is unjust violence)
–Too, a dictator has to fear their own ambitious generals and abused soldiers. The study of the history of mutinies reveals how quickly the dictator’s/captain’s own men of all intelligences and attitudes– can change allegiances in a moment when perceiving their ‘supreme leader’ as weak to act decisively… and often punitively.
And here lies Mubarak’s greatest vulnerability: like Saddam trying to prop himself up even at the end of his life, trying to barter his hideous rule for bleating about all he thought he had done for ‘the people’ and his being completely out of touch with the effect of allowing his armies and his own sons to carry on their rapist, murderous deeds against tens of thousands of people– whose kin have long, long memories,,,
here is Mubarak, following, if not in the rapist/openly murderous footprint of Saddam… but in a similar and stunning hubris all the same… and in Saddam’s case, did Saddam’s army rise up to save, to protect him as he stood preening before the people? Did they truly protect him during his fleeing, or during his capture, or in his prison, or uring his execution?
Mubarak is weakened by his ego-inflated maneuvers before the people today and before the world, what sounds like a campaign speech instead of a goodbye speech.
It may be that he is at highest risk for overthrow, for high ego-inflation is ever followed by a fall… and if he unbeknownst to him has ambitious generals –or even those who love Egypt more than they love Mubarak –or any others who are watching for their chance to pounce in takeover.
For a wise strategist, which Mubarak appears not to be, the third and hidden vector during instability, cannot be overlooked.