#1
That picture bothered me more than any of the other images of that day. It evokes a burning desire to send the men who did this and the stupid bastards that celebrated it by dancing in the streets to the deepest, coldest regions of Hell wrapped in bloody pigskins.
Some have described the situation in Iraq as a tightening noose, noting that "time is not on our side"and that "morale is down." Others have described a "very dangerous" turn of events and are "extremely concerned."
Who are they that have expressed these concerns? In fact, these are the exact words of terrorists discussing Iraq -- Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his associates -- who are describing their own situation and must be watching with fear the progress that Iraq has made over the past three years.
The terrorists seem to recognize that they are losing in Iraq. I believe that history will show that to be the case.
Fortunately, history is not made up of daily headlines, blogs on Web sites or the latest sensational attack. History is a bigger picture, and it takes some time and perspective to measure accurately.
Consider that in three years Iraq has gone from enduring a brutal dictatorship to electing a provisional government to ratifying a new constitution written by Iraqis to electing a permanent government last December. In each of these elections, the number of voters participating has increased significantly -- from 8.5 million in the January 2005 election to nearly 12 million in the December election -- in defiance of terrorists' threats and attacks.
One of the most important developments over the past year has been the increasing participation of Iraq's Sunni community in the political process. In the volatile Anbar province, where Sunnis are an overwhelming majority, voter turnout grew from 2 percent in January to 86 percent in December. Sunni sheiks and religious leaders who previously had been sympathetic to the insurgency are today meeting with coalition representatives, encouraging Iraqis to join the security forces and waging what violent extremists such as Abu al-Zarqawi and his al-Qaeda followers recognize as a "large-scale war" against them.
The terrorists are determined to stoke sectarian tension and are attempting to spark a civil war. But despite the many acts of violence and provocation, the vast majority of Iraqis have shown that they want their country to remain whole and free of ethnic conflict. We saw this last month after the attack on the Shiite shrine in Samarra, when leaders of Iraq's various political parties and religious groups condemned the violence and called for calm.
Another significant transformation has been in the size, capability and responsibility of Iraqi security forces. And this is vitally important, because it is Iraqis, after all, who must build and secure their own nation.
Today, some 100 Iraqi army battalions of several hundred troops each are in the fight, and 49 control their own battle space. About 75 percent of all military operations in the country include Iraqi security forces, and nearly half of those are independently Iraqi-planned, Iraqi-conducted and Iraqi-led. Iraqi security forces have a greater ability than coalition troops to detect a foreign terrorist's accent, identify local suspects and use force without increasing a feeling of occupation. It was these Iraqi forces -- not U.S. or coalition troops -- that enforced curfews and contained the violence after the attack on the Golden Dome Shrine in Samarra. To be sure, violence of various stripes continues to slow Iraq's progress. But the coalition is doing everything possible to see this effort succeed and is making adjustments as appropriate.
The rationale for a free and democratic Iraq is as compelling today as it was three years ago. A free and stable Iraq will not attack its neighbors, will not conspire with terrorists, will not pay rewards to the families of suicide bombers and will not seek to kill Americans.
Though there are those who will never be convinced that the cause in Iraq is worth the costs, anyone looking realistically at the world today -- at the terrorist threat we face -- can come to only one conclusion: Now is the time for resolve, not retreat.
Consider that if we retreat now, there is every reason to believe Saddamists and terrorists will fill the vacuum -- and the free world might not have the will to face them again. Turning our backs on postwar Iraq today would be the modern equivalent of handing postwar Germany back to the Nazis. It would be as great a disgrace as if we had asked the liberated nations of Eastern Europe to return to Soviet domination because it was too hard or too tough or we didn't have the patience to work with them as they built free countries.
What we need to understand is that the vast majority of the Iraqi people want the coalition to succeed. They want better futures for themselves and their families. They do not want the extremists to win. And they are risking their lives every day to secure their country.
That is well worth remembering on this anniversary of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
#2
The one thing that thoroughly baffles leftists opposed to the liberation of Iraq is to compare Baathist Iraq to Nazi Germany.
There is simply no argument they can make to attack one war and decades-long liberation effort but not the other. The best they can do is reconsider their derangement or demonstrate their total ignorance of history, at which point I like to ask them to pay attention to facts. It's not judo, but I've found it works well.
I also like to tell them I expect great capitalist development in Iraq within a couple of decades. So Iraq will be as prosperous and peaceful as Germany, Japan and Italy have become -- thanks to hmmm, thanks to what?
Censure the president. A member of the opposing party in the Senate finally introduced a resolution to do just that. Administration critics may not have agreed on much and lacked a coherent agenda, but they were united in their hostility to the president. He seized powers not granted under the Constitution, treated the judiciary with contempt and acted like an elective monarch. But his throne started to crumble.
Finally, one of the soberer senators gave voice to the frustrations of a party that lost twice to the president: "The land is filled with spies and informers; and detraction and denunciation are the order of the day. . . . The . . . symptoms of despotism are upon us; and if Congress (does) not apply an instantaneous and effective remedy, the fatal collapse will soon come on."
Sen. Russ Feingold? No, Sen. Henry Clay, moving to censure President Andrew Jackson in 1833 for running afoul of the Whig Party's understanding of presidential power.
That's the last time Congress censured a president, and Feingold, D-Wis., thinks Congress should do it again. He introduced a resolution to censure President Bush for "his unlawful authorization of wiretaps of Americans."
Feingold is known as Howard Dean without the scream, but Senate Democrats are now treating his proposal like Dean's infamous "yarghhhhhhhhhh." In fact, it's Republicans who want to vote on Feingold's motion. It's easy to see why. Just when Democrats were making headway against Bush, Feingold has offered a resolution that (a) reflects his party's views of the National Security Agency eavesdropping program and (b) highlights its weakness on war-on-terror issues. No wonder Democrats don't want to vote on the resolution.
Feingold thinks the NSA program is unlawful, as do most Democratic lawmakers, and that's where the trouble begins.
Calling it unlawful doesn't make it so. Oh, it might if there were unanimity or near-unanimity on the lawfulness of the program, or if the administration had acted under some novel legal theory. It might if the administration had acted as though it were engaged in unlawful activity.
But there's no such unanimity or near-unanimity; some legal scholars and judges from both parties have affirmed the program's legal underpinning. Here's the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review in 2002: "The Truong court, as did all the other courts . . . held that the President did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information. . . . We take for granted that the President does have that authority and, assuming that is so, FISA could not encroach on the President's constitutional power."
The administration has never shied from making the legal, constitutional or practical case for the program. In fact, it consulted with lawmakers from both parties from the program's start. The result after three months of reports, hearings and debate: broad congressional and public support for the warrantless monitoring of suspected terrorists' international calls.
Still, Feingold and the Democrats think the program is unlawful. The Wisconsin senator and potential presidential candidate simply wants to take this belief to its logical conclusion or penultimate conclusion. If a president engages in unlawful activity, he should not only be censured but also impeached.
That's too much logic for some Democrats, who would rather gripe about Bush's "lawlessness" than do anything about it. Say what you will about Feingold, he has the courage of his party's convictions. Republicans should honor him, and promote political accountability, by giving his resolution a vote.
Then again, maybe those Democrats are wise to "run and hide." Consider what happened to Clay and the Whigs after they let their "King Andrew" animus get the best of them and censured the "tyrannical" Jackson. They lost the 1834 congressional elections and the presidential election two years later. The next Congress expunged Clay's censure resolution. And Jackson a polarizing political figure and champion of the strong chief executive went down in history as one of our great presidents.
I love how the Kos Kids blather on and challenge each other to "act upon the strength of your convictions" and, supposedly, this will win them the power and glory they so hunger for...
Same for the bold Senators. Feingold acted, but where are his cohorts? Hiding in the Senate cloakroom.
A reckoning for this, and the leaks, and the invective, and the back-stabbing in time of war is coming. And I don't believe for a second it will be as mild as what the Whigs received for their snarling censure motion against Old Hickory.
#4
I personally liked how Feingold introduced this motion and then fled the Senate floor so he would not have to face the debate. Sackless to say the least.
"Faced with some unexpected challenges at home and abroad, the regime in Islamabad will initially try to go for the option of repression. With the failure of repressive measures, the regime might then attempt to lurch toward some democratic maneuvers. But in the turbulence added from external events and interference, democratic antics would not stand much of chance of maintaining the status quo. If Pakistans Gorbachev is alive, he will be a pathetic figure in this whole saga. He has nothing to offer that would place the Pakistan nation on the right track, except playing the role of a mercenary-in-chief of the final crusade."
Response of some Pakistanis to the excerpts from The Musharraf Factor shows that most Pakistanis are still not reading the writing on the wall. They will, however, soon face the music they deserve for losing a golden opportunity of self-rule in an independent, sovereign state. People get the kind of leadership they deserve. At the same time, people with good intentions get equally punished through the effects of unthinking compliance when they refuse to act or fail to make a difference. Iraq and Afghanistan are two clear examples before us.
Iraqis failed to muster enough courage to stand against a weaker Baathist and secularist regime, to establish an exemplary society and a model of governance. They are now paying a far greater price then they would have, had they stood up to Saddam Husains externally supported tyranny.
Ah yes, that massive external support for people shredders and Kurd gassing. I remember it well.
Similarly, Afghans lost their opportunity. Instead of collectively working for the common good of their people after having an unprecedented situation of peace, law and order in the country under the Taliban,
okay, your idiocy position is obvious now
many Afghans joined campaigns that ended with yet another foreign occupation of their countrythis time with the full approval of the United Nations. The result is before our eyes. Afghans, who were delivered from one occupation at a great cost, are now reeling under another indefinite and far worse occupation.
Why, they even have to deal with hussies that don't wear veils! And there hasn't been a decent stoning or beheading in MONTHS. Simply intolerable.
Some analysts have expressed concern that Pakistan is next in line. Others predict Pakistans failure on the basis of their respective parameters of success and failure of states. From the discussion in the preceding chapters, we can clearly see that Musharraf is the main factor among many others that has made Pakistans demise inevitable.
The with us or against us threat from Bush and subsequent Islamabad policies provide evidence that Musharraf is clearly under pressure.
yup
Nevertheless, the list of decisions leading to his willing surrenders is so long that Musharraf can hardly pretend that he is not acting under pressure from within and outside. So far, he is a victim of his delusions, obsession with staying in power and a compulsive attitude of putting everything at stake to achieve his objectives.
This was the case with Mikhail Gorbachev also. Even his adversaries concede that he took the much vaunted initiatives under immense internal and external pressure. However, he had this to say in his famous Nobel Lecture on June 05, 1991:
Now about my position. As to the fundamental choice, I have long ago made a final and irrevocable decision. Nothing and no one, no pressure, either from the right or from the left, will make me abandon the positions of perestroika and new thinking. I do not intend to change my views or convictions. My choice is a final one.
Similarly, advisors to Musharraf ensure that he takes all the blame, thus paving the way for the fall of Pakistan.
In the face of the countrys inevitable demise, Pakistanis are still in total denial despite the fact that they cannot provide a single ray of hope that could make them believe that, unlike the great empires of the past, the vulnerable Pakistan is immortal and will survive indefinitely.
um, first you've got to become a great empire. then we can talk about your place in history. oh - but I forgot how vulnerable poor Pakistan is. Those nasty Hindus we Muslims invaded centuries ago don't have the decency to stay subjugated! In fact, they carved us out of the country! It's that way everywhere ... poooor peaceful Islamacists going about Allan's work of killing and sharia-enforcing, minding Allan's business and what do we get? Ungrateful victims, that's what!!!
The long-term involvement of the military in Pakistani politics and the role it has played for Washington all along
ALL along??? my my, we have drunk the koolaid, haven't we?
is a factor of prime importance in understanding the latest changes as discussed in chapter 5. Musharraf, nevertheless, keeps on gambling on anything he can think of at the moment. His particular theme is enlightened moderation, which embodies secularism >and undermines Pakistans raison dêtre.
Sweetie you were given a CHANCE to survive with your religion and culture intact. Not a guarantee. Life's a bitch and other people inconveniently refuse to roll over for you. shrug
In Diplomacy, Henry Kissinger shrewdly explains the impossible dilemma that Khrushchev eventually perceived, and Gorbachev did not: Gorbachevs gamble on liberalization was bound to fail to the degree that the Communist Party also lost its monolithic character. The same phenomenon applies to Pakistans losing its monolithic character at the hands of Musharraf. The galvanizing force that brought Pakistan into being was Islam; not culture, nor ethnicity, not even language or geography. Nothing supports its creation and survival.
The loss of faith in Islam
if only we were MORE fanatical it would all work! Allan says so !!!
has led to the loss one half of Pakistan in 1971, and continues to weaken the rest of the nation with every passing day. There is no other justification at all for separating this piece of land in South Asia, calling it Pakistan, or keeping people of different cultures and ethnic backgrounds together for a long time. If a secular state was the objective, a single independent state of India made more sense than two separate entities, which drained their resources on arms building and bloody wars.
works for me.
At war with their countrys identity, Pakistanis hardly realize it is going through a phase similar to that of the Soviet Union before its demise. After losing its identity and character, the communist party became demoralized. Similarly, masses have become totally demoralized in Pakistan. Just as liberalization proved incompatible with communist rulethe communists could not turn themselves into democrats without ceasing to be communists, an equation Gorbachev never understoodthe kind of moderation Musharraf proposes is totally incompatible with Islam.
that's the question, isn't it? and if you're right, you're not gonna like the consequences
As we discussed previously, Musharaffs enlightened moderation has nothing to do with Islam. Musharraf simply wants effective subservience to the continued remote control colonialism of the US. Muslims cannot turn themselves into the kinds of moderates demanded by the inventors of these rancid notions without ceasing to be Muslims, an equation Musharraf fails to understand in his pursuit for staying in power at any cost.
You know, keep this up and you'll convince me.
The whole idea of the secularization of Pakistan to make it functional is based on the assumption that Pakistan, and other Muslim countries, can survive without being Islamic or democratic in the true sense and that they can endure a compromise on the principles on which Muslims must put the foundation of their collective life. At the same time, a serious attempt to live by Islam could not occur without risking the labels of extremism and terrorism.
well, that is a problem. I see your point.
Despite Turkeys 80-years experiment with secularization, it has yet to succeed.
It's doing a whole let better than you.
Countries like Turkey and Egypt, for example, have long histories as nations to survive. Whereas, Pakistan didnt exist as a nation before 1947, nor any other known factor except Islam is there to make it a nation. As such Musharrafs regime took to de-legitimizing Pakistans entire foundation. He is being rewarded and applauded like a Gorbachev reincarnate for transforming Islam.
Writing about Gorbachev, Times magazine noted: By gently pushing open the gates of reform, he unleashed a democratic flood that deluged the Soviet universe and washed away the cold war.[1] Such inspiring comments are used by the Western media to push their perceived enemies into thinking they would transform their societies into worldly heavens if they toe Washingtons line. But that is not what actually happens when push comes to shove. According to Jamie Glazovs analysis: Within the blink of an eye, the Soviet Union disintegrated. Ten years later, we know that the process of true democratization in post-communist Russia ultimately failed. Boris Yeltsin and now Vladimir Putin, after all, represent a return to the Russian autocratic past. With no tradition of democracy, or even a conception of individuality, Russians, once again, desire order over freedom.[2]
Musharraf attempted simultaneously to contain and transform the country in the image of its enemies, to destroy and reconstruct, right on the spot as per the plans of those for whom existence of Pakistan has been a thorn in the flesh since its inception. Musharraf is doing what Gorbachev did in his six years in power. The changes in what used to be the Soviet Union have been so great that it is easy to forget what the un-reformed Soviet system was like and how modest were the expectations of significant innovation when Gorbachev succeeded Konstantin Chernenko as top Soviet leader in March 1985. Neither Soviet citizens nor foreign observers or advisors to Gorbachev imagined that the USSR was about to be transformed out of existence. So is the case with Musharraf and Pakistan.
While no one predicted the Soviet Unions demise,
Oh I dunno, I seem to recall an actor who got elected to the White House having some opinions along those lines
the greatest skeptics regarding the prospects for change were the first to be overtaken by events. Some, who in more recent years have castigated Gorbachev for his half-measures, have conveniently forgotten that the actual changes promoted or sanctioned by him exceeded their wildest dreams, making nonsense of predictions that he had neither the will nor the power to alter anything of consequence in the Soviet system. Here, we must keep in mind that the changes under Gorbachev far exceeded their wildest dreams because Gorbachev alone was not responsible. The Soviet Unions demise was also impending, like Pakistans, for quite some time. The changes and transformation by one man became the last straw on the back of the proverbial camel. In Pakistans case, as we discussed in previous chapters, the 162 million Pakistanis have already paved the way with their unintentional surrender to the forces that will wash away Pakistan as an entity.
They probably are just giving in to irrational, obscene desires for a quiet life, a decent living, clean water to drink, kids educated, that sort of thing. People these days!!! They don't even appreciate rural improvement programs that blow up 800 year old statues, or the social value of chopping off hands and feet. I mean, look at all the fuss over a perfectly traditional thing like gangraping a woman whose 14 year old brother talked to that hussy in the neighboring clan. Place is going to hell because of voter apathy like that.
Musharrafs gimmicks are going to just hasten its demise.
In his book, The Gorbachev Factor, Archie Brown correctly points out:
When it became fashionable to react against the enthusiastic support for Gorbachev which was widespread in the late 1980s, the same observers who misread Gorbachevs intentions at the outset became the first to scorn an excessive concentration on the part played by Gorbachev while simultaneously, and with scant regard for logic, holding him personally responsible for all the major policy failures. And failures in the Gorbachev era there certainly wereespecially of economic policy and in the relationships between the Soviet Unions constituent republics and the centre. [3]
The phenomenon that took place in the USSR well before Gorbachevs taking power perfectly fits the situation in Pakistan before Musharrafs coup. The remarkable thing about change in the Soviet Union during the Gorbachev years was that it occurred peacefully. As we shall see below, unlike the Soviet Union, the transformation in South Asia is more likely to be violent. According to Archie Brown: Given the failure of all who had openly attacked the system from within the country to make any positive impact on policy outcomes prior to the late 1980s, it is doubtful if change of such magnitude could have taken place with so little violenceespecially in Russiain any way other than through the elevation of a serious reformer to the highest political office within the country.
In the case of Pakistan, the public in general and politicians and military in particular have constantly been either attacking or exploiting Islam, yet no one had the intention to seriously live by Islam and make Pakistan an Islamic State. Musharraf imposed himself on the nation as an intermediary and justified his dictatorship on the basis of being a serious reformer. Yet the political parties and his foreign backers fell into his series of traps. The former acted blindly and the latter just pretending to be blind. Consequently, the Western backers purposely elevated him to the position of a serious reformer. They know that Musharraf has no real vision other than a desire to stay in power. But his promoters, in fact, do have a vision. The publics complacency and helplessness simply exacerbated the situation.
you've caught on, have you?
The prospect of a military dictator becoming a president acceptable to all is similar to a reformer (Gorbachev) becoming General Secretary of the Communist partythe very idea that such a thing was possible in principlehad been ruled out in advance by many Western observers and by such prominent exiles from the Soviet Union as the writers Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Alexander Zinoviev. Similarly, Bush refused to acknowledge Musharraf by name in his initial interviews after his first inaugurations. When a reporter insisted that the General must have a name, Bush said: Well, we call him a General.[4]
Yet, just like Gorbachev who had great power concentrated in his hands as part of the Communist Party leaders collectively and as the General Secretary individually, the forces for anti-Islam-transformation in Pakistan realized that a person with many hats, absolute power and opportunist disposition in Pakistan should remain in power to follow their agenda. Without the promotion of a genuine reformer and highly skilled politician to the top Communist Party post in 1985, fundamental changes in the Soviet Union would certainly have been delayed and could well have been bloodier as well as slower than the relatively speedy political evolution that occurred while Gorbachev was at the helm. The same plan is being implemented in Pakistan to make its demise less bloody on the one hand and use the outcome for global struggle against Islam on the other. To the disadvantage of Musharrafs promoters, replication of the same plan is not possible under different situations, particularly when instead of an ism a religious faith and a way of life are being targeted: This is the case not only in Pakistan, but on a global level.
Analysts agree that in the case of the Soviet Union, from the moment Gorbachev was liberated after the August coup, his every political statement, his every initiative, seemed to have preservation of the central structure as its main objective. That freedom from the central bureaucracy was what the republics meant by the independence they were demanding seemed to elude him.[5] In the Muslim world, the US adventures, coupled with relying on reformation by a few opportunists is likely to bring about the liberation of Muslim massesthe consequence which the enemies of Islam are actually trying to avoid.
In the past, Western planners wanted to dismantle the Soviet Union and various factors played a role in facilitating this demise. Gorbachev presented the reformation in the name of improving the Soviet economy. The reality, in Archie Browns words, is:
No one, though, really needed to be an economist to see that the Soviet economy was going from bad to worse. The man and woman on the street anywhere between Minsk and Khabarovsk could have said the same. And since this was neither Stalins nor Brezhnevs time but an era of Soviet history of unprecedented freedom, they frequently did. [6]
Western politicians and planners, however, did not base their judgments entirely on the state of the Soviet economy, but accorded a great deal of weight to changes in the language of politics, to new departures in Soviet foreign policy, and to political institutional change, where they did not see any alternative that challenged the supremacy of the West. They mistakenly, and very unfortunately, see this threat now in Islam with Pakistans nuclear capability at its centre.
for good reason, as your rant so far demonstrates
With their understanding of politics, Western planners were constantly amazed to see Gorbachev pull off what seemed to them virtually impossible feats.
Honey, it was always amazing to see Gorby at work, but maybe not for the reasons you think
Today they see these feats in Musharrafs chance meetings with Ariel Sharon and his dining with the American Jewish Congress.
Unclean! Unclean!!! He MET WITH JEWS. That does it, a fatwa against the President. Time to go kill him. Volunteers, anyone? I'll just stay here and ... um ... take messages and stuff while you go rise to the glory of martyrdom. See how selfless I am??
The foreign advisors to Musharraf are more aware than many of the academic observers and the self-proclaimed moderate Muslims of the framework of constraints within which Musharraf is operating and of the balancing act which is at times demanded of him prior to his putting sovereignty, independence and the very identity of his nation at stake.
The process of undermining Pakistan is gradual. Many ideas that are openly discussed in the Pakistani mass media under Musharraf, and in a number of cases translated into public policy, had first been aired in communist and secularist circles in Pakistan before the fall of the Soviet Union. The only difference is that of the use of rancid notions invented in the wake of the end of communism. This terminology now solely focuses on creating divisions among Muslims and demonizing Islam. Moreover, the Soviet Union could not promote its comrades and godless ideology abroad as vigorously as the neo-cons and the millions of Christian Zionists in America are doing in an organized and systematic manner.
That, however, does not mean that this is a simple case of continuity. In fact, the changes of the Musharraf era are more than a continuation of a process the secularists and communists had begun. There was a total lack of positive response to the demands and theories of such elements between 1968 and 1991. A few secularists had dared to speak up. However, many more had decided that discretion was the better part of valour, and stayed quiet until Musharraf had made Pakistan safe for such adventures. Some of them, such as the famous poet, Faiz Ahmad Faiz, didnt even openly challenge the ideology of Pakistan. They were just sending out messages in the name of labor and the working class. Yet they were considered as a threat to national security and were thrown behind bars for years. The measures used against those who made their political dissent unambiguous and public ranged from compulsory exile to incarceration.
Under Musharraf, the world in Pakistan has turned full circle. Former secularists and communists are thriving in the garb of moderates. Nevertheless, the secular movement retrospectively commands little respect. To see them as the prime agents of pro-US changes in Pakistan is highly misleading and a product largely of wishful thinking. They are playing a role in changing the political consciousness of a part of the intelligentsia after initially donning the garb of liberals and now decorating it with the badges of moderate Muslims. And that is why the blame for the demise of Pakistan will not go to Musharraf alone. He remains the factor that galvanized the movement that is making the nations demise inevitable.
On the external front, Musharrafs approach has changed the perceptions and demands of the sustainers-cum-enemies of Pakistan completely. Pakistan has already lost the trust of its neighbors because of the unreliable and unpredictable roles that it plays for the US.
I suspect Kashmir and Waziristan have had an influence too.
Instead of providing them a sense of safety and security,
oh yeah
Pakistan became a source of anxiety for its neighbors. It can play a role in attacking Iran for its sustainers in Washington, just as it did in the case of paving the way for the occupation of Afghanistan. Similarly, Musharrafs Pakistan is no longer one of Chinas staunchest friends as it used to be over the years.
You've noticed that, huh? Perceptive critter.
Iran would not be too deeply concerned about the fate of Pakistans large Shia minority as the experience in Iraq shows,
and neither are you and your fellow Sunni fanatics
and India would reap most of the fruits in the absence of a check on expansion of its regional hegemony and without any prospect of violence and disorder on its Western borders.
man, are we gonna miss that prospect of violence and disorder. not.
After bringing Afghanistan to its present state and abandoning even moral support for both Kashmiris and Palestinians, Pakistan is no more needed as a Muslim nuclear power in the region. Totally controlled by Washington, its nuclear program and capability has become completely irrelevant. Instead, it is now the other way round. The rest of the world would not feel concerned about the disposition of a failing Pakistans nuclear weapons and fissile material, which it already knows is in safe hands. The US and Europeans hue and cry about Irans and North Koreas nuclear programs and a total silence about now occupied Pakistans nuclear program is a telling sign of the assurance that the weapons are in safe hands.
Yup. One down (two if you count Libya) a couple more to go.
In the beginning of the book, we set a simple formula to see if there is any possibility that a positive development can take root in the Musharraf era and lead Pakistan towards safe waters. Our assessment in the subsequent chapters demonstrated that the Musharraf factor has led to an environment in which any positive development, which can put Pakistan on the right track, has become totally impossible.
Achieving the objective for which it was created is impossible (chapter 2). The full restoration of democratic government and the efficient rebuilding of the Pakistani state in the future is also clearly impossible (chapter 3). There are no signs of the emergence of a revolutionary or radical political movement. Pakistan will remain under the occupation of its own military forces: a kind of sweet occupation. Masses will remain helpless until they are completely pushed against the wall like the Iraqis and Afghans. Musharraf will continue to dance to the Zionist and neocons tune until he has absolutely nothing left to gamble with. A major push will come to turn Pakistan into another Afghanistan or Iraq when the high value target is completely softened.
you flatter yourself. Khan's proliferation was a serious issue. don't put on airs going forward tho. I'd be happy to see Pakistan prosper as a secular country. I'd be willing to see you rot if you insist on the path of Islamacism and violence.
Pakistans disappearance from the world map is actually induced by certain features of the armyits conceptual ability to plan incremental change. It is mistakenly considered a plus for reforming the countrys ailing institutions. Analysts believed that Pakistans army is strong enough to prevent state failure but not imaginative enough to impose the changes that might transform Pakistan either in the image for which it was created or the image which the US wants it to adopt. Musharraf calls his mantra of enlightened moderation as a two pronged strategy. Unfortunately, rather than transforming, the strategy and change, which opportunist civilian and military cronies surrounding general Musharraf have chosen, will gradually sink Pakistan into oblivion. This issue was thoroughly covered in Chapter 1.
As for nationhood, despite the dominant position of the armed forces, including a veto over any attempt to change the consensus view of Pakistans identity, the army hardly seems willing to create an identity compatible with the vision of Pakistan, as well as with the objectives that led to its creation.
Pakistans most unusual feature is not its potential as a failed state, as we observed from the earlier discussion, but the intricate interaction between the physical/political/legal entity known as the state of Pakistan and the idea behind Pakistan and the Pakistani nation. Few if any other nation states are more complex than Pakistan in this respect, with the Pakistani state often operating at cross-purposes with the original purpose of its creation.
Regardless of all other factors, the US and UK have publicly launched a war on the very basic ideology at the foundation of Pakistan as a nation. It is akin to separating Jewish identity from Israel. Imagine the transformation in the Middle East if Israel were to stop identifying itself as a Jewish State. In that case, would it be able to justify its existence and occupation of the lands, particularly Jerusalem? The problem in the case of any Muslim entity, however, is that it can either be Islamic or non-Islamic (secular).
As discussed in the Chapter 2 in detail, it is not possible to have a mix of secularism and Islam and label it as Muslim. Like Israel, the state of Pakistan was thought to be more than a physical/legal entity that provided welfare, order and justice to its citizens. Pakistan was to be an extraordinary statea homeland for Indian Muslims and an ideological and political leader of the Muslim world. Providing a homeland to protect Muslims from the bigotry and intolerance of Indias Hindu population was important,
and can you STAND the way those Hindus pushed back after we conquered them? Outrageous, I say!!
but the real motive behind Pakistan movement was to demonstrate to the world a model of an Islamic State based on the principles of freedom, fraternity and equality of Islam. The Pakistan movement also looked to the wider Muslim world, and its leaders were concerned about the fate of other Muslim communities living under duress, stretching from Palestine to the Philippines.[7]
This is exactly what is now considered as political Islam of the Islamists. This is what the 9/11 Commission has referred to as the Islamic ideology and declared a war on it.
Well there was that little matter of the violence that accompanies it
Accordingly, Pakistan has to be dismantled because its raison dêtre has no place in the modern world in which a crusade on Islam is now officially and publicly recognized. We observe this from the official report of the 9/11 Commission, statements from Bush, Rumsfeld and British Home Secretary Charles Clark within the span of just one week.[8] Islamic ideology is the threat and a war on it has been declared. In his speech on October 06, 2005, Bush equated all resistance against the US occupation of Iraq, which was made possible through a series of many lies and distortion of facts, to fighting on the part of terrorists for the creation of an Islamic Empire.[9]
Now think about the following words and comments by the founding fathers of Pakistan. Imagine any nation under occupation or any Muslim leader now saying the following words. They would perfectly fit the well-defined category on which a war has officially been declared. Also note Pakistans founder Muhammad Ali Jinnahs reference to the Quran, Mujahids, Islam and giving protection to neighbors in the following words at a rally on October 30, 1947:
If we take our inspiration and guidance from the Holy Quran, the final victory, I once again say, will be ours Do not be overwhelmed by the enormity of the task You only have to develop the spirit of the Mujahids. You are a nation whose history is replete with people of wonderful character and heroism. Live up to your traditions and add to another chapter of glory. All I require of you now is that everyone must vow to himself and be prepared to sacrifice his all in building up Pakistan as a bulwark of Islam and as one of the greatest nations whose ideal is peace within and peace without Islam enjoins on every Mussulman to give protection to his neighbors and to minorities regardless of caste and creed. [10]
The same is true today. However, just a vow to make Pakistan, or any country for that matter, into a bulwark of Islam, taking inspiration and guidance from the Holy Quran, are now sufficient today to instantly declare anyone an Islamist preaching Islamism at which the US has declared a war. If Jinnah were living today and had uttered these same words he would most certainly have been labeled a terrorist, demonized in the media, hunted down by the US and prosecuted.
depends on whether or not he tended to encourage bombing things
The US expects from the opportunist dictators and moderate Muslims to care about poverty alleviation and forget about their brothers and sisters under foreign occupation. Musharraf has clearly mentioned this in his televised speech on January 12, 2002. Other moderates in the pages of New York Times tell fellow Muslims: Muslims must realize that the interests of our sons and daughters, who are American, must come before the interests of our brothers and sisters, whether they are Palestinian, Kashmiri or Iraqi[11]an approach which is not only in total contradiction to the message of the Quran, but to the basic human values and ethics as well.
At the time of the creation of Pakistan, when the Muslim League adopted the Pakistan resolution on March 23, 1940 calling for the establishment of a sovereign and independent Islamic country, Lord Zetland, Secretary of State for colonial India, wrote of his apprehensions regarding this proposition to Lord Linlithgow, the British viceroy in New Delhi, saying:
[T]he call of Islam is one which transcends the bounds of country. It may have lost some force as a result of the abolition of Caliphate by Mustafa Kamal Pasha, but it still has a very considerable appeal as witness for example Jinnahs insistence on our giving undertaking that Indian troops should never be employed against any Muslim state, and the solicitude which he has constantly expressed for the Arabs of Palestine. [12]
These apprehensions were ignored for other reasons in 1947. However, the creation of Pakistan on these grounds would have been impossible in the 21st century. So, its survival is at stake today when for the most powerful man in Pakistan, words of its founders and the motive behind the Pakistan movement are no more than a mere joke that can be completely ignored and cast aside.
Both the history and the future of Pakistan are rooted in a complex relationship between Pakistan the Islamic statea physically bounded territory with an Islamic legal and international personality that would be guided by Islamic scriptures and traditionsand Pakistan the nationmission-bound to serve as a beacon for oppressed or backward communities elsewhere in the world. Pakistan has bitterly failed at both the state and the national level. The rot that started at the top
beginning
has trickled to the roots and the nation as a whole is as oblivious of its responsibilities as are its leaders.
On the other hand, the forces that undermine Pakistan are nevertheless alive and well focused. Details about how Pakistan has become the high value target were outlined in Chapter 8. Suffice it to present here the following signs that show a large number of forces are bent upon dissolving Pakistan into oblivion.
* Israelis are topping tourist lists in Kashmir where businesses are changing the language of their outlets signboards from English to Hebrew.[13] We must note that after Israeli agents involvement in New Zealand and Canadian passport scams, the visitors in Kashmir could neither be ordinary Israelis nor would they be visiting Kashmir only for vacation purposes.
nefarious, those Joooooos
* The Pentagon recently stressed that it must recruit and train Pakistani military officers to increase Washingtons influence over the countrys armed forces. Paul Wolfowitz told the House Armed Services Committee on August 10, 2004 that failure to train Pakistani officers could mean pushing them into the one alternative, which is the Islamic extremists Its not as though if we leave them alone, nobody else will go out to recruit them.[14]
* According to the argument of the US-led international community: Iran must bring its nuclear program to an end and Pakistans nuclear arsenal must be in safe hands, but Israels weapons of mass destruction must remain a must-have.[15]
Israel hasn't been calling for the destrucdtion of other countries. yet.
* In total contradiction to the founding vision, the approach of Musharrafs regime is to leave Kashmiris fate in Indian hands and push Afghan refugees back into occupied Afghanistan. Some 200,000 Afghan refugees have been living in the remote border areas of Pakistan.
poor, poor refugees. just peaceful Talibs they is
As the Pakistani operations in the tribal area have risen in strength, countless refugee homes are destroyed and thousands of Afghans are pushed back into Afghanistan.[16] According to the New York Times: Refugees have been given as little as two hours notice to leave before their houses were bulldozed, according to officials with the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Some have returned to Afghanistan with no belongings, homeless once again.[17]
* Almost all Pakistanis in the NGO-sector and many politicians to the level of former Prime Minter Zafrullah Khan Jamali have come to believe that the source of Pakistans creation, the Two Nations Theory, is no longer valid.[18]
maybe because it isn't????
* After facilitating the occupation of Afghanistan, Musharraf and his inner circle used the SAARC summit as a forum for direct and secret meetings with Indias top brass.
Jooos, Indians, this man has no shame! He will meet with anyone!!!
This was in order to consolidate a US inspired secret agreement to smooth the path for Pakistan in accepting Kashmir as an integral part of India against existing UN resolutions. Musharraf announced the deal after a closed meeting with Vajpayee on January 6, 2003 when he said: History has been made...The string that was broken at Agra has been repaired in Islamabad. After a phone conversation the next morning with Vajpayee, Musharraf confirmed that: The deal was sealed. A cautious, secretive and incremental process has been adopted in order for India and Pakistan to work jointly in eliminating the threats to the understanding. Officials from Pakistan and India were very nervous with regards to a leak.
* Despite Pakistans surrender on every front, India signed a $1 billion purchase of Phalcon Airborne Early Warning Systems deal with Israel in October 2003. The US, Canada and others have recently extended assistance in nuclear research to India.
It isn't all about you, you know. There's that little country called China to the east. They have a habit of attempting invasions and poor Nepal is on the block as we speak. Lots of people in Assam are nervous.
* Despite Musharrafs sacrificing Pakistani soldiers for the US, the US kept on accusing it of a secret nuclear pact with Saudi Arabia, [19] selling nuclear technology and for being insincere to the US.[20] A CATO study called Pakistans cooperation grudging and spotty.[21] These factors amount to keeping options of the US and its allies open in preparation for the impending U-turn on Pakistan in case there is an attempt to make it an Islamic State according to the mission and vision of the founding masses and the very objective of its creation.
You got it - we're watching and our options are open.
* As the nation that was supposed to be mission-bound to serve as a beacon for oppressed or backward communities elsewhere in the world is lost in Bollywood or cricket and corruption, the government is devoted to revising the school curriculum for teaching them submissiveness to occupation and aggression.
I wouldn't mind seeing you guys as a legitimate beacon. The prospects aren't exactly positive at the moment, though, and there are a few holes in your approach I'd say.
The above summary may not reflect the extent to which Pakistanis as a whole have undermined Pakistan. What is undeniable and known is that ideologically Pakistan has long been dead. If there are any traces of its still lingering on invisibly, the US war on it will deal with it appropriately. Its leftover physical existence neither makes a difference, nor is likely to survive without its soul for too long.
A combination of factors discussed above will therefore ensure that total pacification and ultimate softening of Pakistan remains a priority while it keeps on acquiring the characteristics of a place in which the ghosts of all legendary dictators would feel at home. Thats how the collapse of the present structure and form will take place simultaneously with the emergence of a new order.
The status quo until now has faced no serious challenge in Pakistan, despite the fact that the regime is still fragile, dithering and jittery. The day the simmering rage turns into real resistance in the wake of the masses being pushed against the wall like the case in Iraq or Afghanistan, no one knows if the regime will exercise repression on the scale which we witness by occupation forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine.
closing of jihadi schools. killing of terrorists. interference with godly stonings and beheadings. uppity wimmins. cruel! unbearable!!!
The alternative is that the military itself will split into factions. What is known is that the regime is neither sure of itself, nor is the US a credible master to rely on, at least, in terms of its own survival as a super power, as well as in terms of its long record of betraying its friends. Taiwan is the latest example of the US making a U-turn when there is more money to be made from China. Musharraf and his moderate allies are treading a very thorny path by taking themselves out of the fold of Islam when looked in the light of the definitions and requirements put forward by the American promoters of the new version of Islam (refer to chapter 2).
Any major incident or event can explode into a 9/11 in South Asia and become a turning point. More awareness and exposure of the agenda behind Musharaffs enlightened moderation increases the possibility of a South Asian 9/11, the day after which life will not be the same. Rather than stability, an increased support for the collaborating moderates will bring more turmoil as a result of the increased polarization in the society.
turmoil to you, maybe.
From this point on his wet dream continues with greater and greater intensity. It would be unthinkable to interrupt when he is engaged in such melancholy masturbation. I'll just leave him to it, gentle readers.
Faced with some unexpected challenges at home and abroad, the regime in Islamabad will initially try to go for the option of repression. With the failure of repressive measures, the regime might then attempt to lurch toward some democratic maneuvers. But in the turbulence added from external events and interference, democratic antics would not stand much of chance of maintaining the status quo.
If Pakistans Gorbachev is alive, he will be a pathetic figure in this whole saga. He has nothing to offer that would place the Pakistan nation on the right track, except playing the role of a mercenary-in-chief of the final crusade. He will find himself standing as an arrogant disciple of something far worse than secularism at a time when evangelicals and Zionists (including the Bush administration) are busy shaping the world according to their apocalyptic religious perspective. Some analysts still argue that Bush does use religious language sometimes, but that is rhetoric because the same events would be happening if the oil fields were controlled by Christians or Jews or a secular state, who were not interested in selling oil to the USA.
In fact, Bushs October 6, 2005 speech proves that the sitting administration wants to destroy Islam and turn it into a Christianity-like religion consisting of a few hallow rituals and strip Muslims of their values concerning morality, economy, social conduct and political ideology. Moreover, we know that Saddam Hussain was a lame duck. He was prepared to surrender anything to come back to the former days of glory. For the US, oil, particularly Iraqi, was not a problem at all.
Anything can spark the South Asian 9/11 and a subsequent movement. It could be a direct foreign intervention after miscalculating the softness of the high value target (chapter 8) or it could be sparked internally on general issues of concern, such as unemployment, poverty, privatization, price hikes and repression of the suffering masses. In the former case, Pakistanis will learn and react the way Iraqis or Afghans are reacting after being pushed against the wall. In the latter case, the demands for addressing general issues will rapidly attain a political and ideological character in view of the greater realization of the objectives behind the war on terrorism, enlightened moderation, wars for liberation and winning the heart and minds of Muslims. After lying about Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq in order to justify the countrys invasion and occupation, Bush now openly claims that his revised objective is to not let Muslims establish a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia.[22] It would enter the political plane and then the whole system that is structured to support the 21st century crusade will become a threat to its own survival. Such an upheaval would actually lead to a real breakup of the elite, military and feudal class lines and the very system they are exploiting to suppress the masses and serve the interests of the imperial-capitalist order. This whole process will unravel in ebbs and flows, depending on the developments on the external and internal fronts. The masses will learn through the experience and the rapidly changing objective situation on both fronts.
The helplessness described in chapter 4 will lead to depression and desperation. As intentions of the totalitarians in Washington and London are exposed, no set of peculiar gadgets, gimmicks and cover ups will help conceal the reality to clutter the political horizon of society with falsehoods. The revolutionary storm of a mass upsurge will wash them away. What we witness at the moment, from liberalism on the left and reformism on the right, from secularism to moderatism, are all different sorts of peculiar smokescreens blown up to cover up despotic dictatorships at home and bloody interventions from outside. The objective of these cover-ups is to hinder and discourage the masses in Muslim countries from establishing an alternative system based on the message of Islam. But this is what will happen as a result of approaches undertaken to sustain the corrupt order.The oppressed masses of Pakistan have suffered through this ordeal of democracies and dictatorships. These are political superstructures of an outdated, exploitative and rapacious socio-economic system of the former colonialists, sustained by the present totalitarians and their global financial institutions. Under the dictatorship, the masses yearned and fought for democracy.
The political leadership fooled them into the delusion that democracy would solve all their problems. But it was all loot and plunder. Their miseries intensified. Religious parties also exploited religious sentiments of the masses who cannot tell the differences between them and other exploiters of the godless order imposed on them. With the continued suffering, they have also learnt from the hard school of experience that none of the exploiters in the political parties has a strategy to steer the masses towards establishing a just socio-political and economic order based upon the teachings of Islam. The helpless masses are quiet but their eyes and ears are open. And they are thinkingdeveloping a new consciousnessa revolutionary one that will inevitably explode unto the scene. Some readers may wonder, from where such a spark would appear to galvanize the masses in such a state of total despair and helplessness. The answer to this lies in the October 8, 2005 earthquake in Pakistan, which according to a broad assessment by the World Bank and Asian Development Bank took lives of more than 86,000 people and left 350,000 homeless (Reuters, November 8, 2005). It exposed the worst face of the so-called government and its feet of clay. And the same exposed the potential and the spark in the masses which led to the creation of Pakistan in the first place.
According to the reports thousands of Pakistanis were willing to travel all the way to the far flung areas in the quake hit areas of Balakot or Muzaffarabad to deliver relief goods but they were reluctant to hand over anything to any government agency. So much for the trust in the government and credibility of its institutions! To the contrary, masses were willing to give to such organizations as Jamaat-ut-Dawaah, the Jamaat-i-Islamis Al-Khidmat, Al Badr, Al Rasheed Trust, Al Mustafa Trust, Tanzeem-e-Islami and others which are wrongly labeled as Islamist organizations and portrayed as enemies of civilization.The earthquake also exposed the lack of trust in Pakistan army as a credible institution. Ayaz Amir, writing in Dawn, confessed: Having been in uniform myself, I say this with a heavy heart. Why have things come to this? In 1971 wherever we went people greeted us, waved at us, gave us food and offered help. Helping the army was considered a privilege and even when Dhaka fell and our eastern command laid down its arms, they didnt blame us soldiers, they said we had been stabbed in the back. People held Yahya Khan and his coterie (and their serious tippling) responsible for the debacle, not the army as a whole. It all seems so long ago. [23]
There is a big difference between criticism of Bushs response to the destruction in New Orleans in the wake of Katrina and criticism of the so-called government of Pakistans response to the earthquake. That the government was slow to respond immediately after the event is even admitted by General Musharraf. What is alarming, and quite difficult to understand for impartial observers is:
the governments continuing failure to treat this disaster on a war footing. Anything by the name of government is not to be seen in the quake-hit areas. But newspapers are full of the exploits of Shaukat Aziz and his army of cabinet ministers. Seen against the backdrop of what has actually happened, this craze for publicity looks positively obscene. [24]
Musharrafs regime self-praised its work. Around the clock, the state-controlled Pakistan Television (PTV) showed pictures of press briefings, interviews and visits to the disaster zone by government officials, ministers, the prime minister and Musharraf. As usual, PTV acted as a mouthpiece of the regime, with absolutely no criticism of the weaknesses of the relief efforts. Reporters mostly talked with survivors at aid distribution facilities and at hospitals in Islamabad, and only aerial views of the remote villages were screened. Government officials were unhappy with the coverage of private channels, which showed live interviews and the views of survivors. There were reports of the media being denied entry to certain areas.[25]
Ayaz Amir compared the situation to the Hamas phenomenon happening in Pakistan, where organized authority (in the case of Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, in our case, the organs of government) able to do very little, while the burden of social work (in this case relief work) is taken up by Islamist organizations. What this portends is obvious.
Analysts claim Musharrafs external battle, to be seen to be tackling fundamentalism, will now be overshadowed by his domestic battle, to placate Muslim hardliners within his own military and government who are angry at his apparent failure to lead his country in its time of need.[26] Others are totally shocked with what the Islamic groups are doing. Writing in Slate Magazine, Mahnaz Ispahani expressed his concerns in these words: Poised to take advantage of the governments inability to cope with the disaster are the Islamist parties and their extremist cousins.[27]
While expressing fear for the sitting regime, Hassan Rizvi, a political analyst said: The militants are taking matters into their own hands and winning over members of the public on the ground. Their popularity will soar in these regions as a result and the government will appear directionless. It is a very dangerous situation.[28] Just two days after the earthquake, when the governments inability to move its resources in the services of its own people was not even known to anyone in advance, Stephen Cohen told his host at the NPR Morning edition on October 10 that Musharraf now faces a deeply uncertain future: Pakistan is unstable as a government and a society. This is often the case with one-man rule, and especially one-man rule in which serious people - al-Qaeda and its allies inside Pakistan - are trying to kill him. These people are all his enemies and now the public are angry at his response to a major disaster.[29]
This type of propaganda from outside will intensify with the decrease of popularity of stooges working for their imperial masters. Not only the masses will realize the truth but also leaders of the religious political parties will realize the futility of establishing Islam through un-Islamic ways and means. If they dont, under the changed circumstances it would not be difficult for new leadership to emerge. The public response in the wake of earthquake shows the spark among the masses is still alive. They are patiently waiting and observing the state of affairs in which democracy is as impossible as living by Islam; where ending the US interference is as impossible as getting rid of military dictatorship. After 58 years of deception and oppression, it matters little if this explosion is triggered by an Iraqi style invasion from outside or a sparked from within. This is the verdict of history, it is the universal law. Tyranny may be prolonged for some time, but it can not endure forever. Similarly, Muslims can deviate from the right path and the ultimate Islamic objective, but they cannot be committing shirk[30] upon shirk; living under a secular system;[31] living by man-made laws;[32] thriving on Riba;[33] seeking protection from those who have openly declared a war on living by Islam;[34] supporting the enemies of Islam in butchering fellow Muslims;[35] classifying Muslims into different groups and introducing new forms of Islam that are not based on the sound principles of the Quran and Sunnah,[36] and still not only deceiving themselves to be living in an Islamic republic, but also hoping to see it survive despite undermining it both physically and ideologically.
The Pakistani people can always change their course and hope for the best. But the peoples stubbornness to stay the course and all the aforementioned factors, along with the Musharraf factor, does not bode well for the future of Pakistan. Unless Musharraf is stopped in his tracks and both the nation and the political leadership make a 180 degree turn to untangle themselves from the American web and establish a model state according to the vision of the founding masses, the more likely the demise of Pakistan seems.
Note:
For the 36 references in the above text, please refer to Abid Ullah Jan's book,
The Musharraf Factor: Leading Pakistan to Inevitable Demise.
Posted by: john ||
03/19/2006 11:41 ||
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#1
Muslims cannot turn themselves into the kinds of moderates demanded by the inventors of these rancid notions without ceasing to be Muslims
Posted by: john ||
03/19/2006 12:49 Comments ||
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#2
This fricking idiot misses the point. If Musharraf had refused to help Bush, even as little as he has, after 911 then Pakiwakiland and Afganistan would be glass today.
He's got a blind spot so big you could drive a million bbl oil tanker through it.
#3
Musharraf's biggest mistake is to not follow the dictator's rulebook. That is, dictators have only a few choices if they want to keep their heads.
1) Be an iron-fisted bastard until you die. Never let the opposition have any advantage, and systematically take down your enemies. Do not let your lieutenants have a chance to be ambitious. This is a real dictator.
2) If you want to be succeeded by real democracy, you have to set up *both* the government party and the opposition party as totally loyal to the state. You smash anybody else with pretenses to power, such as religious leaders, fanatics, and other anti-democratic forces. You write and enforce the constitution, and take out anybody who wants to destroy it. Finally, when you surrender power, you either have to leave for good, or die. As with everything else, timing is everything.
#7
JFM: for better or worse, Pakistan is useful right now. In one light it was much like Bangladesh, once part of India, but too filled with Moslems to integrate--it frees India from a perpetual civil war bloodbath with so many Moslems. But that was then.
Today and in the future, it holds other prospects. It does have a very useful new deep water port at Gwadar. It owns half the restive province of Baluchistan, and might someday soon be the only power capable of managing the other half, if it is wrested from Iran. Baluchistan, in turn, is very mineral rich, and could improve Pakistans standard of living very much.
Musharraf is the precarious man-in-the-middle. And dictator though he might be, he is all too aware that his hold on power is tenuous. His enemies cannot yet overthrow him, but he cannot slaughter them, so a stalemate is achieved.
We might actually wish that he was stronger, but only at the expense of his enemies. Gradually, he is becoming stronger, but only slowly his grasp tightens over his extensive and chaotic tribal enclaves. And this is far from the villains on his doorstep, in his parliment.
Margaret Bourke-White was a correspondent and photographer for LIFE magazine during the WW II years. In September 1947, White went to Pakistan. She met Jinnah and wrote about what she found and heard in her book Halfway to Freedom: A Report on the New India,Simon and Schuster, New York, 1949. The following are the excerpts:
Pakistan was one month old. Karachi was its mushrooming capital. On the sandy fringes of the city an enormous tent colony had grown up to house the influx of minor government officials. There was only one major government official, Mahomed Ali Jinnah, and there was no need for Jinnah to take to a tent. The huge marble and sandstone Government House, vacated by British officialdom, was waiting. The Quaid-i-Azam moved in, with his sister, Fatima, as hostess. Mr. Jinnah had put on what his critics called his "triple crown": he had made himself Governor-General; he was retaining the presidency of the Muslim League -- now Pakistan's only political party; and he was president of the country's lawmaking body, the Constituent Assembly.
"We never expected to get it so soon," Miss Fatima said when I called. "We never expected to get it in our lifetimes."
If Fatima's reaction was a glow of family pride, her brother's was a fever of ecstasy. Jinnah's deep-sunk eyes were pinpoints of excitement. His whole manner indicated that an almost overwhelming exaltation was racing through his veins. I had murmured some words of congratulation on his achievement in creating the world's largest Islamic nation.
"Oh, it's not just the largest Islamic nation. Pakistan is the fifth-largest nation in the world!"
The note of personal triumph was so unmistakable that I wondered how much thought he gave to the human cost: more Muslim lives had been sacrificed to create the new Muslim homeland than America, for example, had lost during the entire second World War. I hoped he had a constructive plan for the seventy million citizens of Pakistan. What kind of constitution did he intend to draw up?
"Of course it will be a democratic constitution; Islam is a democratic religion."
I ventured to suggest that the term "democracy" was often loosely used these days. Could he define what he had in mind?
"Democracy is not just a new thing we are learning," said Jinnah. "It is in our blood. We have always had our system of zakat -- our obligation to the poor."
This confusion of democracy with charity troubled me. I begged him to be more specific.
"Our Islamic ideas have been based on democracy and social justice since the thirteenth century."
This mention of the thirteenth century troubled me still more. Pakistan has other relics of the Middle Ages besides "social justice" -- the remnants of a feudal land system, for one. What would the new constitution do about that? .. "The land belongs to the God," says the Koran. This would need clarification in the constitution. Presumably Jinnah, the lawyer, would be just the person to correlate the "true Islamic principles" one heard so much about in Pakistan with the new nation's laws. But all he would tell me was that the constitution would be democratic because "the soil is perfectly fertile for democracy."
What plans did he have for the industrial development of the country? Did he hope to enlist technical or financial assistance from America?
"America needs Pakistan more than Pakistan needs America," was Jinnah's reply. "Pakistan is the pivot of the world, as we are placed" -- he revolved his long forefinger in bony circles -- "the frontier on which the future position of the world revolves." He leaned toward me, dropping his voice to a confidential note. "Russia," confided Mr. Jinnah, "is not so very far away."
This had a familiar ring. In Jinnah's mind this brave new nation had no other claim on American friendship than this - that across a wild tumble of roadless mountain ranges lay the land of the BoIsheviks. I wondered whether the Quaid-i-Azam considered his new state only as an armored buffer between opposing major powers. He was stressing America's military interest in other parts of the world. "America is now awakened," he said with a satisfied smile. Since the United States was now bolstering up Greece and Turkey, she should be much more interested in pouring money and arms into Pakistan. "If Russia walks in here," he concluded, "the whole world is menaced."
In the weeks to come I was to hear the Quaid-i-Azam's thesis echoed by government officials throughout Pakistan. "Surely America will build up our army," they would say to me. "Surely America will give us loans to keep Russia from walking in." But when I asked whether there were any signs of Russian infiltration, they would reply almost sadly, as though sorry not to be able to make more of the argument. "No, Russia has shown no signs of being interested in Pakistan."
This hope of tapping the U. S. Treasury was voiced so persistently that one wondered whether the purpose was to bolster the world against Bolshevism or to bolster Pakistan's own uncertain position as a new political entity. Actually, I think, it was more nearly related to the even more significant bankruptcy of ideas in the new Muslim state -- a nation drawing its spurious warmth from the embers of an antique religious fanaticism, fanned into a new blaze.
Jinnah's most frequently used technique in the struggle for his new nation had been the playing of opponent against opponent. Evidently this technique was now to be extended into foreign policy. ....
No one would have been more astonished than Jinnah if he could have foreseen thirty or forty years earlier that anyone would ever speak of him as a "savior of Islam." In those days any talk of religion brought a cynical smile. He condemned those who talked in terms of religious rivalries, and in the stirring period when the crusade for freedom began sweeping the country he was hailed as "the embodied symbol of Hindu-Muslim unity." The gifted Congresswoman, Mrs. Naidu, one of Jinnah's closest friends, wrote poems extolling his role as the great unifier in the fight for independence. "Perchance it is written in the book of the future," ran one of her tributes, "that he, in some terrible crisis of our national struggle, will pass into immortality" as the hero of "the Indian liberation."
In the "terrible crisis," Mahomed Ali Jinnah was to pass into immortality, not as the ambassador of unity, but as the deliberate apostle of discord. What caused this spectacular renunciation of the concept of a united India, to which he had dedicated the greater part of his life? No one knows exactly. The immediate occasion for the break, in the mid-thirties, was his opposition to Gandhi's civil disobedience program. Nehru says that Jinnah "disliked the crowds of ill-dressed people who filled the Congress" and was not at home with the new spirit rising among the common people under Gandhi's magnetic leadership. Others say it was against his legal conscience to accept Gandhi's program. One thing is certain: the break with Gandhi, Nehru, and the other Congress leaders was not caused by any Hindu-Muslim issue.
In any case, Jinnah revived the moribund Muslim League in 1936 after it had dragged through an anemic thirty years' existence, and took to the religious soapbox. He began dinning into the ears of millions of Muslims the claim that they were downtrodden solely because of Hindu domination. During the years directly preceding this move on his part, an unprecedented degree of unity had developed between Muslims and Hindus in their struggle for independence from the British Raj. The British feared this unity, and used their divide-and-rule tactics to disrupt it. Certain highly placed Indians also feared unity, dreading a popular movement which would threaten their special position. Then another decisive factor arose. Although Hindus had always been ahead of Muslims in the industrial sphere, the great Muslim feudal landlords now had aspirations toward industry. From these wealthy Muslims, who resented the well-established Hindu competition, Jinnah drew his powerful supporters. One wonders whether Jinnah was fighting to free downtrodden Muslims from domination or merely to gain an earmarked area, free from competition, for this small and wealthy clan.
The trend of events in Pakistan would support the theory that Jinnah carried the banner of the Muslim landed aristocracy, rather than that of the Muslim masses he claimed to champion. There was no hint of personal material gain in this. Jinnah was known to be personally incorruptible, a virtue which gave him a great strength with both poor and rich. The drive for personal wealth played no part in his politics. It was a drive for power. ......
Less than three months after Pakistan became a nation, Jinnah's Olympian assurance had strangely withered. His altered condition was not made public. "The Quaid-i-Azam has a bad cold" was the answer given to inquiries.
Only those closest to him knew that the "cold" was accompanied by paralyzing inability to make even the smallest decisions, by sullen silences striped with outbursts of irritation, by a spiritual numbness concealing something close to panic underneath. I knew it only because I spent most of this trying period at Government House, attempting to take a new portrait of Jinnah for a Life cover.
The Quaid-i-Azam was still revered as a messiah and deliverer by most of his people. But the "Great Leader" himself could not fail to know that all was not well in his new creation, the nation; the nation that his critics referred to as the "House that Jinnah built." The separation from the main body of India had been in many ways an unrealistic one. Pakistan raised 75 per cent of the world's jute supply; the processing mills were all in India. Pakistan raised one third of the cotton of India, but it had only one thirtieth of the cotton mills. Although it produced the bulk of Indian skins and hides, all the leather tanneries were in South India. The new state had no paper mills, few iron foundries. Rail and road facilities, insufficient at best, were still choked with refugees. Pakistan has a superbly fertile soil, and its outstanding advantage is self-sufficiency in food, but this was threatened by the never-ending flood of refugees who continued pouring in long after the peak of the religious wars had passed.
With his burning devotion to his separate Islamic nation, Jinnah had taken all these formidable obstacles in his stride. But the blow that finally broke his spirit struck at the very name of Pakistan. While the literal meaning of the name is "Land of the Pure," the word is a compound of initial letters of the Muslim majority provinces which Jinnah had expected to incorporate: P for the Punjab, A for the Afghans' area on the Northwest Frontier, S for Sind, -tan for Baluchistan. But the K was missing.
Kashmir, India's largest princely state, despite its 77 per cent Muslim population, had not fallen into the arms of Pakistan by the sheer weight of religious majority. Kashmir had acceded to India, and although it was now the scene of an undeclared war between the two nations, the fitting of the K into Pakistan was left in doubt. With the beginning of this torturing anxiety over Kashmir, the Quaid-i-Azam's siege of bad colds began, and then his dismaying withdrawal into himself. ....
Later, reflecting on what I had seen, I decided that this desperation was due to causes far deeper than anxiety over Pakistan's territorial and economic difficulties. I think that the tortured appearance of Mr. Jinnah was an indication that, in these final months of his life, he was adding up his own balance sheet. Analytical, brilliant, and no bigot, he knew what he had done. Like Doctor Faustus, he had made a bargain from which he could never be free. During the heat of the struggle he had been willing to call on all the devilish forces of superstition, and now that his new nation had been achieved the bigots were in the position of authority. The leaders of orthodoxy and a few "old families" had the final word and, to perpetuate their power, were seeing to it that the people were held in the deadening grip of religious superstition.
Posted by: john ||
03/19/2006 10:25 ||
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Remarkable observations by Margaret Bourke-White.
She identified the ideological bankruptcy, the rise of islamism, the expectations of US aid at the very founding of Pakistan.
We have the sixty years of observation. She saw it right away.
They don't make correspondents like this anymore...
Posted by: john ||
03/19/2006 12:53 Comments ||
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#2
Well, have you been keeping track of whats-his-name's dispatches from Kurdistan?
(Thinking)
Michael Totten, I think?
He had an interesting interview with the caretaker of a mosque that got bombed by the US.
Posted by: Phil ||
03/19/2006 13:39 Comments ||
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#3
Holey Moley! Great stuff John! This confusion of democracy with charity troubled me. I begged him to be more specific.
From MB White of all people.
by Ayaz Amir The consequences are before us. In India the American president is ecstatic in praising Indian democracy and Indias achievements in the economic field. In Pakistan he presses its military ruler on democracy and the war on terrorism. Gen Musharraf may say that Pakistan does not follow an Indo-centric policy but with everything in Pakistans arsenal from tanks to missiles to nuke capability India-specific, there wont be many takers for this newest theory.
OVER the cartoon issue the people of Pakistan have demonstrated themselves to a standstill. What are the various forms of protest? We, or rather the religious right (especially the Jamaat-i-Islami which was in the forefront of this campaign), have tried them all: rallies, strikes, a nation-wide near-shutdown, some spirited burning and looting in Lahore and Peshawar.
Not that the religious right was behind the burning and looting. Armchair analysts said that was the work of the the exploited under-class. That may have been so but the under-class vanished as quickly as it had emerged. Exploitation and the under-class havent ceased to exist. But where on earth have both disappeared?
Anyhow, the cartoon issue having been played out, exhaustion has set in. I doubt if transport and trade organizations will heed any more calls for strikes and shutdowns. Faith is faith and there can be no quarrelling with that, not in Pakistan where we tend to take such matters seriously, often over-seriously. But business is business and that too must go on.
In a quirky way, George Bushs visit to Pakistan has helped pull the final curtains on the cartoon issue. For it has brought home to the people of Pakistan that:
Aur bhi gham hain zamanay mein, muhabbat key siwa.
(There are other sorrows in the world beside love.)
Before, it was the cartoon issue dominating the political landscape. Now the whole of political Pakistan (that part of it which takes such issues to heart) is mourning the Bush visit, comparing it unfavourably to his much more hyped visit to India.
Bush may have done Pakistan no other favours but for this shift of focus he deserves our thanks.
While we may have badly needed this splash of cold water on our faces, all in all the Pakistani reaction is still a bit strange and not a little tinged by something that can only be called paranoia.
What gifts were we expecting George Bush to bring with him? Didnt we know that the Americans and the Indians had been discussing the terms of the nuclear deal they have now signed for some time? Wasnt there a strong possibility that it would be signed during Bushs trip to India? Werent we also aware that nothing similar had been discussed with Pakistan? So when all the pieces fell into place, why the surprise? There is fairly strong opposition to this deal on Capitol Hill because of fears it will undermine the global nuclear non-proliferation regime.
But this deal alone does not define Indo-American relations. Whether it goes through or not, the uncomfortable fact remains that no one considers us and India to be in the same league.
Size and population and even history and culture go only some way to explain this invidious comparison. India is surging ahead economically and counts for something on the world stage. During the Cold War and the heyday of nonalignment, its principal export was moral self-righteousness, served ever so often with large dollops of hypocrisy. It was fashionable then to speak of the Hindu rate of growth. Alas, not any more.
We, on the other hand, who began on a fairly promising note, successfully laying the foundations of a new state and on the economic front doing better than anyone had expected, are now famous for other things: terrorism-related items, jihad, religious fanaticism and a benign tolerance of military dictators. Can we blame anyone for viewing us differently?
So what is all the mourning about? What were we expecting from George Bush? If we had any sense, we should have given this visit a pass, politely informing our American friends (no tongue-in-cheek remark this because they remain our friends) that there was just no way we could express our great love for George Bush in less than five days.
And if he couldnt spare five days then we would wait impatiently for the time when he could.
In the event, we settled for a half-measure which, far from doing us any good, or adding anything to the well-known and established parameters of our relationship with the US, has only generated the feeling that the US is not a reliable friend and has let us down once again.
As nonsense goes, this is rich. The US hasnt betrayed the terms of the alliance we struck with it post-September 11. As part of that deal we undertook to provide certain facilities airbases and the like and perform certain functions like helping catch Al Qaeda elements strictly in the context of the so-called war on terror.
In return, the US agreed to give us nearly 700 million dollars annually half military assistance, half economic aid for five years. It was also helpful in getting some of our loans rescheduled. We werent forced to accept this at gunpoint. This was the price Gen Musharraf, with open eyes, put on Pakistani cooperation.
There were personal benefits for Gen Musharraf too. Prior to Sep 11 he was considered little better than a tinpot dictator.
Post-Sept 11, after Pakistan agreed to become an ally in the war on terror, he became an overnight international sensation, presidents and prime ministers from all over the world desperate to visit Pakistan and shake his hand.
This must have been a heady feeling which perhaps goes some way to explain why Musharraf and those of his generals who were in the decision-making loop (a tiny number) didnt look too closely at all the aspects of their pact with the United States.
Afloat on a self-generated tide of hype and spin they got hold of the word strategic as if they had invented it, and applied it to every category known and unknown to man. Appearing on TV Gen. Musharraf declared that the new American connection would safeguard Kashmir policy, protect nuclear assets and boost the economy.
Kashmir apart, about which there is nothing that anyone can do, this wasnt an inaccurate assessment. We know American concerns about nuclear non-proliferation, and if the US has been less demanding than it might have been in wanting to question Dr A. Q. Khan, the father of the Pakistani A-bomb, suspected of trading in nuclear secrets, this is due in no small measure to our Afghan and Al Qaeda services.
If only our military leaders had stopped at the frontiers of realism. Instead they chose to step into fantasy-land, loading the American grid with more strategic voltage than it could carry.
The false expectations were ours. America was scarcely to blame. The question of betrayal therefore does not arise.
Military dictators flourished once upon a time. They were even held up as models of virtue and progress. Their day is up. No one takes them seriously any more. The US is happy dealing with a military strongman because it is convenient, decision-making becoming easier. But this does not mean the US will not exploit his weaknesses.
The consequences are before us. In India the American president is ecstatic in praising Indian democracy and Indias achievements in the economic field. In Pakistan he presses its military ruler on democracy and the war on terrorism. Gen Musharraf may say that Pakistan does not follow an Indo-centric policy but with everything in Pakistans arsenal from tanks to missiles to nuke capability India-specific, there wont be many takers for this newest theory.
In Pakistan the same man receives the US president one day and meets the Centcom commander, Gen Abizaid, the next, on both occasions stressing Pakistans services in the war on terror. Problems of style dog him.
For Bush he must wear a civilian suit, for Abizaid the trademark army uniform. The labours of Hercules look less complicated.
The Indian policemen fire at targets at Kanker in the central state of Chhattisgarh, India March 9, 2006. At Kankar, the new Counter-Terrorism and Jungle Warfare School, a retired army brigadier is turning ordinary policemen into counter-insurgency troops, 'turning boys into men' as one of the school's slogans declares. Picture taken March 9, 2006. REUTERS/Kamal Kishore
Posted by: john ||
03/19/2006 12:42 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
The consequences are before us. In India the American president is ecstatic in praising Indian democracy and Indias achievements in the economic field. In Pakistan he presses its military ruler on democracy and the war on terrorism. Gen Musharraf may say that Pakistan does not follow an Indo-centric policy but with everything in Pakistans arsenal from tanks to missiles to nuke capability India-specific, there wont be many takers for this newest theory. 
OVER the cartoon issue the people of Pakistan have demonstrated themselves to a standstill. What are the various forms of protest? We, or rather the religious right (especially the Jamaat-i-Islami which was in the forefront of this campaign), have tried them all: rallies, strikes, a nation-wide near-shutdown, some spirited burning and looting in Lahore and Peshawar.
