Monday, November 5, 2007
I Learned It By Watching You
So, it's only sensible that as my homeland descends into typicality, I should feel the urge to blog about it. However, I didn't opine on the state of Pakistani affairs when the chief justice was sacked initially several months ago; nor did I weigh in when Generalissimo Musharraf reneged on his promise not to stand for reelection whilst in uniform. I suppose I was a bit blog-shy because my posts about the dead Pakistani cricket coach yielded little attention from you, fickle reader.
Alas, that said, this news is a big deal, or at least the MSM is making it out to be. I remember when I was a kid it was a big deal when anything related to Pakistan made its way into the newspaper; now Pakistan's as big a story as the Duke rape scandal (though not quite as big a story as the overdose death of a soft-core pornography star). Before the blowhards and alarmists of the world come to completely dominate this story, let me wipe some of the saliva from their glee: It ain't no big deal. Sure, Musharraf's suspended civil liberties, quashed thousands of dissenting voices, made a mockery of the terror threat by exploiting it for political gain, asserted himself in the workings of a so-called independent judiciary, and willfully misinterepreted the Constitution.
But it's how we do in Pakistan; it's how we've always done, and nothing about it should be unfamiliar to those of us who've lived in America the last six years.
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5 comments:
the majority of your readers might be pretty scared if the headlines here said "Lawyers beaten in streets" and the like.
maybe i, along with whatever "MSM" stands for, overemphasize overt displays of tyrannical power--a subtle dismantlement of civil liberties is, in a way, more frightening. but i'm glad i can say that the rule of law prevails here, even if it's with a wink.
Heidi, yet again, what I regard as a difference of degree, you regard as a difference of kind. But this isn't Yankees/Red Sox. And I'm not just being cheeky; whether or not the rule of law prevails here is immaterial to my point, which is that Musharraf steals nakedly from the Bush playbook, touting democractic principles whilst working only to serve his own bullheaded convictions. What's frightening--and what is material-- is that he has devolved into this ogre precisely as he has become further mired in the quixotic struggle to contain religious maniacs spilling over into Pakistan from Afghanistan, a country bombed and torn asunder by an inept American military campaign. Cause and effect, my friend.
Realizing that he's failing to contain the extremist threat, he's chosen instead to trade civil liberties for hardline posturing. And therein lies the rub.
Now, I don't mean to undersell what's happening on the streets. Yes, lawyers have been beaten, but that has nothing to do with ideology or really Musharraf himself. That's what happens when a mass of people protest in a country with an untrained and grossly underpaid police force. If the fact that that kind of thing doesn't tend to happen here heartens you, so be it. It heartens me not in the least. As Americans, there is blood on our hands too: yesterday's Afghani Taliban is today's Pakistani insurgent. Yesterday's benevolent, far-sighted dictator is today's tyrant.
These are not just subtle points the mainstream media (MSM) ignores, as it parades the Musharraf-as-bogeyman storyline all around town. This is why--bizarrely and paradoxically--we are losing an apocryphal war on terror.
what's your thesis? ease up on the criticisms of musharraf because if we/bush hadn't started this war on terror, he wouldn't have to suspend civil liberties and fire the supreme court? are you defending homeboy?
firing the justices of a supreme court throws the rule of law out the window, and it is that act that puts this either in a different basket, or takes it to the nth degree (depending on your semantic choice). but in highlighting the difference, my point is not to ignore the "cause and effect" of this war on terror--it is only to say that the level of concern displayed in the MSM (i'm on it now) is appropriate.
p.s. my gratefulness for the privilege of order should not be confused with being smug. i hope that i can use the law to effect the changes we need to right many wrongs. i'm just glad that tool is available-- i might be useless otherwise.
Heidi, the problem is that the MSM has hung its hat on the Musharraf-as-bogeyman storyline--to the detriment of nuanced or appropriate coverage. I don't have a thesis, so much as a gripe.
I'm neither defending nor celebrating him--I'm pointing out that his gross abuse of power, seen, as you point out, in his sacking the Chief Justice, was both inevitable and predictable. He alienated vast swathes of the country in becoming Bush's chief tool in the region. Moderates have turned against him. The Islamists always hated him, and now he's losing grip of the military too.
Anyone who knows even one shred about Pakistan knows that the only functioning branch of society is the military. He can't lead without its support; nor can he trust it to operate independently of him (a good many sub-generals would love to assert their fascist designs on the country themselves), and he can't turn it over to Benazir Bhutto. Is any of this being communicated in our finest newspapers?
The real tragedy here is not Musharraf's repudiation of democratic principles. After all, while Musharraf's bad, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif--freely elected prime ministers both--are unmitigated disasters. The real tragedy is that in Pakistan, democracy has proved to be a totally failed enterprise, yet we have Condi Rice and George Bush waxing soundbite about their hopes for Janurary elections.
Musharraf isn't bad because he's turned his back on law and order; he's bad because he's the next chapter in a disastrous national history, a chapter our Administration had a direct hand in writing.
There may never be another September 11th in this country, but America's wanton campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq ensure that there certainly will be a few more in Pakistan. When we talk about the death of law and order, it'd be nice if we got over ourselves a little to understand how it came to die in the first place.
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