As Egypt bid farewell with a full state funeral to Hosni Mubarak last week, the president of Egypt from 1981 until his downfall amid the Arab Spring of 2011 was recalled internationally in disparate ways.
Noting that Mubarak was a strongman who oversaw one-party rule, arrest, and torture of opponents, civil libertarians looked on him as a relic of the autocratic style of ruler swept away in Northern Africa during the Arab Spring.
But other observers of the Middle East were quick to point out that Mubarak was a loyal friend to both the United States and Israel who faithfully supported the offensives against then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in 1991 and 2003.
As with any controversial world leader, there are always two sides to the story. But one thing nearly all Mubarak-watchers agreed on was that as much as the uprising in Cairo was part of the Arab Spring, the Egyptian president's very public promotion of his son Gamal as his successor was pivotal to his undoing.
Unlike his predecessors Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar Sadat — both of whom died in office — Mubarak never named a vice president and thus had no obvious successor.
Most Mubarak-watchers point to the year 2000 and the sudden state-run media attention on Gamal Mubarak — who was 37 at the time, fluent in English, and a graduate of St. George's College and American University in Cairo — as the beginning of his father's efforts to groom him for the presidency.
Gamal Mubarak, named for Egypt's revered President Nasser, joined the General Secretariat of the ruling National Democratic Party and became its assistant secretary general in 2006. He also launched a nonprofit organization known as Future Generation Foundation (FGF), which many saw as a thinly veiled Mubarak-for-president campaign.
Coming at a time when Syria's President Hafez-al-Assad was succeeded by his son Bashar, none of this sat well with Egypt's all-powerful military. A major reason for the military-run overthrow of the Egyptian monarchy had been the dynastic succession culminating in the rise of King Farouk — and his downfall in 1952.
More importantly, every Egyptian president since — Mohamed Naguib, Nasser, Sadat, and Mubarak — had been a career military officer. The younger Mubarak had never served in the military and, experts agree, this resulted in an estrangement between the president and Egypt's military chieftains.
"Mubarak's downfall was his attempt to hand over power to his son," Cynthia Farahat Higgins of the Middle East Forum told Newsmax. "Every Egyptian President since the 1952 coup d'état was from the military. The Egyptian Army looks down on civilians, so there was no way the military was going to accept to be ruled by a civilian."
For a few years, there was a reported struggle for succession between Gamal Mubarak and Gen. Omar Suleiman, Egypt's spy chief. Suave and sophisticated, the English-speaking Suleiman had headed Egypt's feared intelligence service and had a close relationship with the CIA.
But it was obvious to all within Cairo's political circles that Mubarak wanted his son — and the military wouldn't stand for it. When pro-democracy demonstrators began marching in 2011, Mubarak became one of five military rulers in the Middle East to fall quickly. The military did nothing to keep him in power.
The embattled Mubarak finally named his old comrade Suleiman his vice president. Less than two weeks later, he resigned. With other family members, Gamal Mubarak was later charged with corruption and enrichment from the government.
Egypt's first free elections were held in May 2012. In a run-off election the following month, Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood eked out a win over Mubarak's last Prime Minister Ahmed Shafik, 51.7% to 48.3%.
Two years later, Morsi — Egypt's first civilian president — was eased out of power and Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi returned Egypt to its traditional military rule.
Would the situation have been different had Mubarak not engaged in nepotism?
"It's, of course, impossible to know for sure whether the military would have stood by Mubarak if he'd had a more qualified successor in place," John Hannah, a former national security advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney, told us. "But there is no doubt that his desire to establish a family dynasty through Gamal, who was widely viewed as both corrupt and unserious, deeply offended the military and its republican sensibilities."
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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