Word: nasser
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...October War. Dressed as Egypt's Supreme Commander in a field marshal's gold-braided blue uniform festooned with a green sash, Sadat made a traditional stop on the way to the parade, paying his respects and praying at the grave of his predecessor, Gamal Abdel Nasser, in nearby Heliopolis. Then the President climbed into an open-roofed limousine, accompanied by eight bodyguards, to join Mubarak and Defense Minister General Abdel Halim Abu Ghazala for the short ride to Nasr City...
...peace-maker, not Sadat the war-monger. In this and many other ironies of his life, Sadat was a paradox, a man to befriend you one day only to abandon you the next. Indeed, the late Egyptian ruler once flirted with Hitler's Germany, then denounced it; supported Nasser, then disowned him; courted the Soviet Union, then rejected it; and waged war on Israel only to then embrace it in conciliation. Unstable as this course may seem, it does have an inherent logic, for Sadat was a man who, in his own words, constantly sought a mission in life...
...With Nasser, a confusing, often ambiguous relationship was the norm. In his autobiography, In Search of Identity, Sadat said: "Some people have wondered how I managed to spend such a long time by Nasser's side...I must have been, they concluded, either too insignificant or too cunning...All there was to it was that Nasser and I had been friends (for a long time)." Sadat had an almost fanatical belief in loyalty and thought the glue of friendship sufficient to keep even those who disagree together. In fact, he affirmed that he continually, if not always publicly, contested Nasser...
...Under Nasser, Egyptian policy focused on improving defense and the economy. The Soviet Union, by agreeing to furnish arms and finance important industrial projects, provided the answer to this problem. Yet Sadat, while supporting this alliance, was wary. He realized that by depending solely on the Russians, Egypt put a leash on itself. In 1972, two years after he succeeded Nasser, Sadat ordered the withdrawal of most Soviet personnel in Egypt. He did this, as he later claimed, to "show the whole world that we are always our own masters...
...those known for their wisdom and clarity of vision to survey the problem, with all its complexities and vain memories, in a bold drive toward new horizons." Characteristically, Sadat found the flexibility to forget past Arab-Israeli hatreds, just as he had once forgotten his alliances with the Nazis, Nasser and the Soviets. Sadat was never unstable. Rather he was an ideologue who set different targets at different times for himself and for his country and then tried to attain them...