| President Pervez Musharraf's declaration of emergency rule this weekend will only encourage further civil strife, nationwide protests and greater territorial gains by the extremist Pakistani Taliban. Never before in Pakistan's sad history of military rule has a general so reviled invoked martial law to ensure his own survival. |
Sir Oracle will be in trouble if nobody gets further encouraged -- or anyway, in a world run by wisdom, Sir Oracle would be in trouble. In the real world, he finds himself on page A-19 of the Washington Post instead, which in a manner of speaking is trouble in itself. The intellectually respectable invasion-language press does not much care about the Perils of Pervez one way or the other. To be sure, the Post features an authentically paleface Postie analysis on the front page, wherein Mr. Griff Witte (who?) reaches for the handiest silver lining:
| Many analysts say they think there's an opening for Musharraf's political opponents to mobilize against him. Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, for instance, has the ability to bring hundreds of thousands of people into the streets against Musharraf. But it is unclear whether she will; she has been negotiating a power-sharing arrangement with Musharraf for months, and any street agitation by her supporters would jeopardize those talks. The top leaders of other opposition parties have been imprisoned. While the lawyers are certain to protest, their numbers are comparatively small. And with independent television blacked out, the police and army could use violence to put down anti-Musharraf demonstrations without inflaming public opinion. |
Rather a muddled reach, for on balance it sounds even chez Witte as if Mme. Feudal Landlady can not in fact bring her dynastic retainers out into the streets to overthrow the vile machinations of Colonel Moustache. The headline editor at the Post knows how it must come out in the end, however: "Musharraf Declaration Seen as Latest Misstep / Risky Choice Fits Pattern in Efforts To Retain Power" -- not only is Moustache an obvious baddie, he's a rather unintelligent baddie who puts his foot down wrong, so who can doubt he's doomed?
Ah well, "The People united can never be defeated!" -- and what could be more people-uniting than the colonels Moustache (and the second lieutenants Bush) of the world? Plus what would become of the amour-propre of the Fourth Estate, if "independent television blacked out" were in fact to carry the day? Untinkable! Moustache is as good as defunct, obviously.
M. Ahmad Rashid on page A-19 is at least a couple of cuts above the front page baloney, perhaps because he actually knows a little bit about darkest Musharrafistán. However such knowledge comes with the usual price tag: M. Rashid has axes of his own to grind, and I draw your attention, Mr. Bones, to the melancholy spectacle that such grinding makes. He wants to get rid of Moustache, plainly, and perhaps even of moustachism as a system, and he is not so Panglossian as to expect much from Them The People back home. M. Ahmad Rashid wagers rather that somebody of importance at Rancho Crawford or Castle Cheney will read his piece in the District of Columbia hometown fishwrap and perceive that it is in the general interest of Kiddie Krusadin' and the particular self-interest of Boy and Party to get rid of Colonel Moustache. This strikes me as rather a bad bet, in the sense that things probably won't happen like that, but it is also a sad and depressing sort of bet, win or lose. M. Ahmad Rashid is reduced to kissing the Asses of Power, is what it comes to, just as Mme. Feudal Landlady has been similarly reduced.
The shame and pity of this is not merely that our now incumbent Asses of extremism don't give a hoot about the future of independent television or dynastic patronage in South Asia, though needless to say they don't. The whole show might be even shabbier if the GOP geniuses took a genuine interest in such things the way Secretary of War Albright did whilst unilaterally and preëmptively creating the happiness of Kosova. "Come put me and my friends in power because . . . ." is miserable stuff no matter who the friends are, and no matter how excellent the rationale is. Weakness admitting how weak it is simply does not edify. A moralist might well moralize that such a performance ought to be edifying, and perhaps it does not speak well for human nature in the face of peccatum originale that weakness seems somehow shameful and pitiable simply as such. Nevertheless, things are as they are and why should we wish to be deceived? It does not speak well of feudal landladyism or independent journalism that these things cannot impose themselves upon Pakistan unassisted.[1]
(The generalization implied is perhaps only a rebuttable presumption. I should hesitate to say in 2007 that my Uncle Sam looked weak and shabby in 1776-81 because he had to go cap in hand to the court of France. Still, nearly everybody in the holy Homeland except professional historians manages to forget that anything of the sort ever happened at all, which suggests that most of us might consider it fort mauvais if they did ever think of it. However it happened so long ago, and Sam's subsequent Ascent to Hyperpower is so huge an obstruction to seeing antique things in perspective, that it may be best not to adduce that evidence for any purpose at all. God knows best.)
In addition to the radical and substantial subaltern sadness of M. Ahmad Rashid, there is a sort of sarcastic icing on top as well, in that he is reduced to making pretty much the same appeals for himself and his friends as Col. Moustache makes -- and probably that Mme. Landlady makes in private as well:
| . . . greater territorial gains by the extremist Pakistani Taliban . . . battle against extremism on northern Pakistan, where a resurgent Pakistani Taliban helped by al-Qaeda, Afghan members of the Taliban and several foreign terrorist groups are conquering territory and expanding the boundaries of their "liberated" sharia state. . . . extremists know that the Pakistani state has been irretrievably weakened and that this is the moment to push their offensive . . . . |
I'm reminded of the eighteenth-century joke about how most gentlemen felt honour-bound to quarrel over Religion as if she was a lady that none of them genuinely care for. Neither Mme. Landlady nor Col. Moustache nor M. Rashid can seriously consider that saving Pakistan from extremist Taliban is priority number one, yet what else can they talk about when they approach Château Kennebunkport and Castle Cheney and Rancho Crawford on bended knee? None of that pack are so naïve as to suppose that the militant GOP is likely to do anything for them just because they happen to want it done, not even in exchange. 'Tis but more sadness and shabbiness that they should be forced to accommodate themselves to narcissistic jerks whom one must talk nonsense at if one expects to obtain any advantage at all.
You recall the joke advice about how one should never grow old, Mr. Bones, and the plight of the Pakies is like unto it: Don't ever be weak, sir!, there is simply no profit to be derived from it.
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[1] Colonel Moustache can make a certain amount of hay for the bad guys out of this dubious configuration of human sentiment. Just being a colonel helps him considerably, for pursuit of the violence profession does not often look weak and pitiful and shabby to the vulgar. The poor dears are of course muddled about the matter, because any serious military confrontation is likely to result in not just suggesting, but effectively demonstrating, that somebody's colonels are no great shakes after all. Still, Musharrafistán has, like most of the barracks-based republics of the Levant and Latin America, managed on the whole to avoid classical military confrontation with the neighbors. The fact that its violence pros can't actually grab control of Waziristan &c. does not seem to discredit them much with The People, and perhaps there is no reason why it should, as long as the disputed badlands are remote enough from where real people live.
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