Tahrir Square, Egypt's true parliament

After a too-short period of democracy following the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, Tahrir Square remains Egypt's true parliament. That is where no-confidence votes are held against the president. Mubarak was first, but on Sunday it was Mohammed Morsi's turn to feel the wrath of the masses, who held up a red card with the demand, "Leave!"

The opposition has called on demonstrators to remain on the streets until Morsi leaves the presidential palace. They have already been spreading revolution, even issuing announcements with titles like "Revolutionary Message Number One." But, at least on the surface, Morsi has shown no willingness to give up.

The pictures of Sunday's protests looked exactly like those from 2011, with one difference. The demonstrators last night represented a new demographic that would have been unimaginable only a year ago: the liberal youth. The youth who saw the Muslim Brotherhood join in the January 2011 protests have allied with the remnants of the Mubarak regime and its supporters to topple Morsi. It's hard to believe that the reactionaries returned so soon to the scene of the crime, Tahrir Square.

And that's not the only astonishing thing we saw yesterday. On top of it all, the U.S. isn't coming across well in the protests. America's support for Morsi is a source of anger for the Egyptian masses. Many demonstrators hold up signs that read things like, "America supports terror." U.S. President Barack Obama's 2009 Cairo address didn't have many buyers on Sunday.

Egypt is searching for a path, or at least the start of path, but it has no guide. The liberal opposition has not produced a real protest leader and the Muslim Brotherhood erred by failing to put one of its figures in power. Morsi is not someone who excites the masses, not the guide that Egypt is searching for.

As of the time I wrote this, four people had been killed and dozens wounded in the unrest in Egypt. That level of violence may not be of concern to everyone, but it is a warning sign. One spark could ignite the entire country. While the Egyptian people are connected to their flag and homeland, the polarization today is so deep that the worst case scenario is possible. The Egyptian military has a responsibility to prevent the worst case, and can't afford to sit on the fence for long. Egyptian Air Force Apache helicopters flew above Tahrir Square on Sunday in a show of deterrence. The same helicopters were in the sky during the anti-Mubarak protests in 2009. They didn't help then and they won't help now.

Egypt's military has 500,000 members, while more than three million Egyptians took the streets yesterday. The military will likely tell Morsi that he must make concessions, but even this won't guarantee the survival of his regime. Morsi had hoped that the election would ensure him four years in power, but he is now finding out how little outside support (from the U.S., for example) is worth. Food for thought.

Egypt's state-run Al-Gomhuria newspaper ran a headline on Sunday morning that read "The Longest Day." That phrase is the title of Cornelius Ryan's book that tells the story of D-Day. The book borrows its name from German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's comment about the Allied invasion of France, "The first 24 hours will be decisive … for the allies, as well as for Germany, it will be the longest day." A movie was made based on the book. As things stand now, it doesn't appear that an Egyptian remake of "The Longest Day" would feature Morsi in the role of the hero, played by an A-lister like John Wayne.

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