Cut the head off a snake....

and the tail continues to wiggle. There can be no reform in Egypt with the entrenched dictatorship that had years of opportunity to enact legitmate and productive changes that would have made Egypt a model for other ME countries.
Egypt doesnt need American architects to run and build monstrously ugly vanity buildings as are now in Qatar, Doha that sit empty. Egypt needs a dismantling of its baksheesh system.
I'm no expert on how to do that, but as of this writing, if you can't pay you dont get anything, or anywhere. From standing for hours waiting for a piece of stamped paper at the Ministry office, which has notably been ransacked this evening, then being told to return another day...the paper stamper had to leave the office early tough luck. Citizens who travel hours or days from the countryside for documents, left stranded in Cairo without receiving what they came for.
People existing on a bowl of fuul and pita, hot tea, those who can make $2 a day-this is not the rule, these are the underemployed lucky folks who do have jobs.
Students graduate from American University in Cairo after their parents paid for american style courses, with american dollars with the hope that their kids can escape the country and make a future elsewhere-there is very little opportunity even for the educated elite who can afford thousands in education each year.

So what do people do? They hustle, sweet talk one another, sit in cafe's and smoke sheesha, talk ad talk, go online.
There was an era now gone where garbage was collected by an entire neighborhood of junk sellers who individually collected wagons of metal scrap, newspapers, rags and recycling everything.
People live in cemeteries...let the US media visit the City of the Dead where generations of families take up residence in tombs because they cant afford housing and they are then paid to upkeep the graves of those wealthier who won't/cant do it themselves. Or visit apartment buildings and as you walk into the lobby look under the stairways, all older buildings in Cairo have stairwells, you'll find families or a single man living inside a tiny crawl space locked door while maintaining the rest of the building.
Women live on traffic islands with their children! if they are widowed, divorced without maintenance, disgraced, homeless. All this has to have been in front of Mr. Mubarak eyes as he drove by in his bulletproof BMW or maybe Suzanne noticed it on one of her literacy tours around the country.

Urging Egyptians to read when their bellies are empty, their apartments filled with family to the point of indecency.
Apt buildings built with cement or concrete mixed with sawdust so that its expection to remain standing is a decade or less.
Bread flour cut with a variety of unknown and known products so that this most essential food remains affordable.

The tragedy is all of the above and then none of these points, because much of Africa and other ME countries are not living in much better situations. But Egyptians are different and that is the difference.

There is potential, not only in the college educated youth, the older generation who lived pre Nassar and through that revolution, the generation who lost land and wealth to see the fruits of their labors redistributed, they have much to advise now and should be listened to. They've lived thru loss and upheaval. The great theater artists and writers of Egypt who have had to encode their work, their comedies, their movies to pass by the censors-they have the intellectual insight to contribute because they've been speaking of the ills, corruption and keeping the hearts of the Egyptian people whole with humor throughout all the decades of waiting for the better moment, the real opportunity, the rebuilding of what was once a noble and great country. There is unique potential Mr. Mubarak was so greedy and stupid to grow and build upon. He could have ruled by popularity for restoring a great country.

Even now...as the revolution unfolds, Egyptians for the most part show themselves as the people they are. They are not Americans, running and rioting, looting and stealing...and they are poorer and hungier than any American can imagine. They welcomed the Army as it settled in, expexting the Army arrived as their compatriots, they are looking at the military as their guardians. They know these men and boys as the successful ones, the cousins, brothers, uncles, the boy next door who got accepted in the Army, a prestigious moment for an Egyptian family-they look to these boys with clean hearts not suspecting that the butt of those guns may now be used to end their dreams, possibly their lives.

Once again, the future of Egypt and its people is in the hands of its sons in uniform. Only G-d can make this miracle and move their hearts in the right direction.