THE constitutional amendments proposed recently by the military government cover a wide range of political issues and aim at revising the basic character of the Constitution. The main thrust of these amendments is the enhancement of the powers of the president ostensibly to create a balance of power between him and the prime minister. The fact of the matter is that these amendments, if carried out as proposed, will tilt the balance of power decisively in favour of the president at the expense of the prime minister and the parliament.

Under these arrangements the political system will function smoothly only if the prime minister works in harmony with the president and the top brass of the military. Given the current political realities in Pakistan when an army chief is holding presidency and the political forces are weak and fragmented, the top brass of the military will enjoy veto power on Pakistans democracy and constitutional rule.

This is not for the first time that a Pakistani military regime has attempted to restore constitutional and participatory governance on its terms through constitutional and political engineering. This step will soon be followed by the cooption of some political leaders who are prepared to work within the parameters set out by the military regime. Pakistans experience suggests that such efforts have initially succeeded but these do not offer enduring solutions to Pakistans perennial political problems.

The present military regime is confident that it can successfully introduce a host of political and constitutional changes that will overcome the problems that cause internal disorder, political breakdown and uncertainties about the future direction of the polity. Such a confidence and an aura of self-righteousness on the part of the military rulers can be explained with reference to their psychological make-up and the political experience over the last three years.

The psychological disposition and the worldview of the senior commanders are shaped by the military ethos that highlights discipline, order, hierarchy and control. The military pursues a management model that emphasizes centralization and control with a clearly defined authority structure at the top and the command lines flow from the top to the bottom. These attributes are an asset for the military when it is given a task to complete. These also facilitate military take-overs in a country suffering from internal political chaos and disorder. However, such an orientation is an obstacle when the military regime works towards creating a political order for returning to constitutional and democratic rule.

Politics requires different ethos and orientations, which are often despised by a typical military mind. The political norms, especially within a democratic framework, emphasize participation, dialogue, accommodation and compromise. The democratic process is often noisy and slow and it involves some elements of the ‘spoils system’ in the developing countries. The people in power are more vulnerable to political pressures and demands from below, especially from the popular level. Politics is the art of the possible through participatory decision-making against the backdrop of the conflicting pressures. A failure to respond to the participatory demands can lead to political confusion and instability.

The military rulers, despite their commitments to democracy, cannot overcome their psychological make-up that calls for establishing a focal point of authority at the top and prefers control to participation and sharing of power. The recently announced amendment-proposals reflect these ethos. The president has been bestowed with enough overriding powers to keep the prime minister and the parliament under check. A house full of ‘graduates’ and ‘technocrats’ may look impressive. However, there is no empirical evidence available to suggest that the people having academic degrees and job experience make better legislators. These conditions, coupled with the regime’s efforts to change the internal arrangements of the political parties, will definitely keep the parties and leaders off-balance. These proposals exclude a large section of the populace from competing for political offices, which goes against the spirit of democracy. The latter stands for providing opportunities to more and more people to join the mainstream of the political process.

Three other factors have shaped these constitutional proposals. First, the military regime did not face any serious domestic challenge and it excluded, at least for the time being, two of its major adversaries — Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif — from the political process. The military rulers are confident that they can easily succeed in introducing the desired changes in the Constitution; the political forces are too divided to disrupt the process. The post-September 11 international environment has enabled the regime to muster conditional US support, which reinforces its confidence to pursue its domestic political agenda.

Second, the senior commanders have come to the conclusion that internal stability and political continuity cannot be guaranteed without their direct involvement in the decision-making process at the highest level. They have also made up their minds not to give a free hand to the political leaders who are viewed as a ‘necessary evil.’ They think that they must retain enough power to keep the political leaders on the ‘right track.’

Third, the military has developed such an extensive stake in civil society and the economy that it cannot stay aloof from political power management in Pakistan. The present military regime has inducted more serving and retired officers in civilian jobs (political, bureaucratic, other government and semi-government institutions and bodies) than any previous military government. There is hardly any civilian institution worth its name that does not have retired or serving military personnel in key positions. This practice has helped the regime to function smoothly but it caused much alienation amongst the senior civilians working in these institutions.

Furthermore, the military has developed extensive economic and business interests through its “welfare” foundations. The protection of these interests calls for the military’s definite share in power management at the top. The introduction of an all-powerful president and the induction of the service chiefs in the National Security Council will help protect the militarys concrete interests and ensure political stability and continuity as defined by them.

The new constitutional proposals have therefore to be viewed in the context of the military commanders’ worldview and their perceptions of what the Pakistani politics ought to be. Any confident military regime will work towards ensuring the continuity of policies and key personnel in the period after a formal return of the military to the barracks. The long-term durability of the political and constitutional changes and their democratic character are not their primary concerns. The Musharraf regime is no exception.

THE constitutional amendments proposed by the military rulers in Islamabad have attracted a great deal of derision from the usual suspects. Politicians severely hit by the power-deprivation syndrome suspect that the forthcoming elections will offer them little relief.

Lawyers believe that General Pervez Musharraf has every intention of flouting the limits imposed by the Supreme Court on his right to tinker with the Constitution. Human rights organizations and incorrigible democrats fear that the provisions, if enacted, will entrench military ascendancy in the nation’s governing structures.

They may all be correct, but their criticism is misplaced. If the proposals have been found wanting, it’s not because they go too far but because they do not go far enough.

After all, what better way could there be of making sure that the military does not periodically intervene in Pakistan’s politics than guaranteeing it a permanent role in running the show?

The National Security Council may not be a terribly novel idea, given that it has been doing the rounds for decades, but that should not detract from its ingenuity. If truth be told, as the real repository of power and decision-making, it would effectively negate the need for any sort of assemblies — except insofar as they are required to keep up appearances.

In the unlikely event of disagreements arising in the council chamber, it will be reassuring to remember that no bunch of prime and chief ministers could conceivably be a match for the collective clout of the heads of the armed forces.

But what if Musharraf is succeeded as president at some indeterminate point in the future by, horror of horrors, a man in mufti? Would that not create a potentially destabilizing civilian-military imbalance?

Probably not, given that it is the military chiefs who wield the weapons. However, there are ways of making certain that such a dilemma never arises.

Since the Constitution, for what it’s worth (which is not much, given that it has been held in abeyance for almost as long as it has been in effect since its promulgation in 1973), is anyway being radically rewritten, it would be useful to insert a clause specifying that the chief of the army staff will always be the head of state.

That would not only secure unassailable khaki preponderance in the National Security Council — with the COAS-president being able to vote twice in the rare event of a straw poll being deemed necessary — but would also render referenda superfluous. The COAS-president’s term of office would, of course, not be fixed, and each incumbent would be able to designate a successor.

Following logically from that, let it also be the law that the corps commander of every provincial capital will double as the governor of his respective province. Why make do with retired officers when serving generals are available?

The existing proposals already empower the president to name a prime minister, and, given Musharraf’s below-his-station initials, one can foresee a smattering of semi-oxymoronic “PM names PM” headlines in the not too distant future. The problem in this context is that the prime minister will be required to prove his majority in the Majlis-i-Shoora (as the lower house of parliament will reportedly be designated, presumably in a nod to Ziaul Haq’s innovatory zeal).

This could be a cakewalk for Imran Khan or whoever happens to be the favoured candidate. But it may turn out differently. After all, who knows what sort of unreasonable riff-raff may end up in the Shoora if the choice is left to the people, who are perfectly capable of being led astray by unscrupulous elements.

Safety lies in making the choice for them. But that needn’t involve not holding an election, and thereby running the risk of attracting gibes from across the border and a rap on the knuckles from the US State Department. Needless to say, there is a way around it. Let it be written into the Constitution that every candidate must be approved by the COAS-president.

Being a scrupulously fair man, he wouldn’t want to confuse the electorate by picking more than one candidate per constituency. And that would settle the issue, so to speak. Let the election follow the pattern of the wonderful referendum (it’s really too bad that Major-General Ehtesham Zamir, head of the ISI’s political wing and reputedly one of the prime movers behind the referendum initiative, had to be sidelined). And let every successful candidate enter the Shoora with the blessings of more than 90 per cent of voters. A similar system worked well for the erstwhile Communist Party-run nations. Until they collapsed.

Notwithstanding all the merit in a pliant parliament, however, there’s one more thing that needs to be done: the political parties must be brought to heel, It’s all very well to require them to hold elections, but that could still throw up unpleasant results. Uncoerced, members of the Pakistan People’s Party may choose to retain Benazir Bhutto as their leader. The Nawaz Sharif faction of the Pakistan Muslim League might opt for comparable folly. How can such nonsense be averted?

It’s easy. Let the Constitution spell it out unequivocally: the leader of any party that wishes to take part in selections — sorry, elections — must be endorsed by the COAS-president. How’s that for a foolproof strategy? No more Benazir Bhuttos or Nawaz Sharifs, and an indulgent head of state could leave Nawabzada Nasrullah in place just to prove that veteran politicians aren’t being pushed aside.

That would lead to a near-ideal situation whereby we would begin attracting envious glances from nations such as Turkey, which have long hankered for a military-dominated autocracy shielded by a pluralist facade, but haven’t so far discovered how to make it work in the long term.

Who knows, we may even reach the stage where the likes of Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney fly in to receive advice rather than liberally dispense it. The US is, of course, already run by an unelected cabal. But never before in living memory has the ship of state been captained by a man who received less votes than his rival. George W. and his cohorts will therefore be keen to put behind them the embarrassment of Florida’s hanging chads and the desperate appeals for Supreme Court intervention.

And now Pakistan can show them the way. Step one: Don’t mention presidential elections; hold a referendum instead. What, after all, could be more democratic than that? And with only one candidate to sponsor, big business could save tens of millions of dollars in campaign contributions.

It would, of course, be an unusual experience for Pakistan to be looked upon as a model: that really hasn’t happened since Ayub Khan was hailed as an Asian de Gaulle. There’d be no more “failed nation” taunts from across the border. And it is a distinct possibility that the Musharraf brand of democracy could be applauded, and perhaps even adopted, by nations in our neighbourhood that have thus far viewed ballot boxes with deep suspicion. Even the Saudi elite, to cite an obvious example, would be hard put to find fault with an electoral system that — to borrow another Ziaism — guarantees ‘positive’ results.

But hold on, we’re forgetting something. We have thus far overlooked the people of Pakistan. We’re in exalted company, because over the years most of our rulers have done the same. However, there has invariably been a price to pay.

You can choose the prime minister and his cabinet, pick leaders for political parties, select their parliamentary candidates. You can stuff the ballot boxes (and a lot more besides). The people can be subjugated, relegated, victimized, disenfranchised. But you can’t get rid of them (short of sparking a nuclear exchange). They can’t be deselected or overthrown. They can be indulgent and are not all that hard to please. They even have a sense of humour. Yet they can be unforgiving when it comes to deception. And nothing that anyone writes into the Constitution can change that.

Looking back, it is quite remarkable that — barring the odd mercenary success, such as the Zia-led contingent’s role in massacring Palestinians at the behest of Jordan’s King Hussein in 1970 — the armed forces of Pakistan have scored all their main triumphs against the people of Pakistan. Guiding the Taliban towards Kabul could be construed as an exception, but it wasn’t one: unleashing such forces was a crime not only against Afghans but also against Pakistanis.

Another distinguishing feature worth noting is that all four dictators thrown up by the army have thrived, at one point or another, upon American support, whether as supposed bulwarks against communism or as valued partners in the so-called war against terrorism. And all of them attempted to entrench their power through new-fangled interpretations of “democracy”. Three of them failed miserably.

Describing a proposed political arrangement shaded in khaki as democracy is, perhaps, no more bizarre than categorizing unrestrained state terrorism as a war against terror. Who can blame Musharraf for trying to draw upon the lexicon favoured by his current friends-and-masters as well as his forerunners?

And who can seriously doubt that his crude and disingenuous hoax, which is all too reminiscent of the “dhancha” that Zia came up with nearly 20 years ago, will implode sooner or later?

All one can add to that is: the sooner the better. And preferably before July 31.

ALL prime ministers of Pakistan keep calling upon public servants to change their style of work and their attitude towards the people in consonance with the need of the time.

I don’t exactly recall a similar exhortation from the Chief Executive, but he must have made it because no PM can do without it. I suppose Begum Pervez Musharraf can be requested to advise bureaucratic begums to do the same in respect of their own style and attitude.

All Third Word countries have VIP wives, or VIPs by marriage, one should say. But since periods of democracy in Pakistan have been few and far between, and the bureaucracy, both civil and military, has been the de facto ruler of the country for long stretches of time, appellations like Begum General and Begum deputy Commissioner have come to be accepted without tongue in cheek. They are used solemnly even by the newspapers.

A few years ago we had a distinguished visitor from aboard. Distinguished in her own right, that is. Her name was Khanum Rahnaward, and she also happened to be the wife of the then prime minister of Iran. She had only one complaint against her treatment as a guest here. She said her own personality as a scholar was ignored and she received VVIP attention merely because of her husband’s status. Her statement left many people, mostly VIP wives, bewildered at that time.

In Pakistan the common grouse of begums of VIPs is that they are not properly appreciated. People are simply incapable of realising the importance of their role in contributing to the personality (and often the advancement) of their husbands and tend to take them simply as wives. Nothing could be farther from the actual state of affairs. But then, even with this handicap, they succeed effectively in making their presence felt.

One of my unforgettable memories is the withering, blistering look I received from the wife of Lahore’s deputy commissioner when on duty as a minor official in the VIP enclosure at a cricket test match in the fifties. I had failed to recognize her as such. I can never forget the words that went with the icy look. “Bare afsos ki baat hai!” that left me feeling like an ignorant moron with a sin on his conscience. Imagine, not being able to recognise the DC’s begum! Its a wonder I was not demoted or something.

In the heyday of General Ziaul Haq’s rule, the begum of the Chief of Air Staff, a self-proclaimed poetess, came to Radio Pakistan, Islamabad for an interview on her place in Urdu literature. She was accompanied (or rather conducted) by an ADC in uniform, and the expectation was that the interviewer should speak to the Begum Sahiba only through that officer. It took all of radio’s persuasion and PR to convince the pair — Begum Air Chief and the ADC — that this was not possible.

As I recall after all these years, as if the observation about her treatment as a prime minister’s wife was not enough, Khanum Rahnaward told pressmen that she had not purchased a new pair of shoes for the last ten years. She also took pride in saying that at home she had no servant, and that she tried to maintain the standard of living of the lower middle class for her family. The strangest aspect of her presence in Pakistan was that she was unaccompanied by any companion or private secretary.

Really, one should do something about keeping such visitors from coming to this country. They have no business disturbing our pet notions and leaving our begums in a trauma. It is well that the Khanum never went to the Philippines, another Third World country, during the reign of “Queen” Imelda Marcos of the 3,000 shoes fame. The Khanum had only the authority of some twenty books to her credit, but then it would have had to be 3,000 books to match the number of Imelda’s achievement.

In a country like Pakistan where the wives of VIPs are rated in importance on the clothes, jewels and shoes that they are able to buy in one evening in London or New York, the Khanum’s statement about her ten-year old pair of shoes was singularly inept and untimely. Here the wife of a section officer would any day have made a better showing than that lady.

They say that in China no wives are invited to state functions, nor are they accorded special treatment on the strength of their husbands’ official position. If that is still true, even after the advent of Coca Cola in that country, then the begums of Pakistan should take a delegation to Beijing to educate the Chinese begums on their rights and privileges. This sort of exploitation of wives should not be allowed to go unchallenged, whatever the country and whatever the international protocol involved. “Equal opportunities for begums everywhere,” should be the name of the game.

In the West, women are praised if they take interest in the official careers of their husbands. There may be many such wives in Europe and America, but I’m sure our begums can teach them a thing or two. The extent of the latter’s interest can be gauged from the fact that most of them identify themselves completely with their sahibs’ posts. I have heard them saying. “When we were commissioner in Bahawalpur...” or “There was an SDO under us at Sargodha...” It will take a long time and much effort and practice for western wives to achieve that state of oneness with husbands.

The truth is that begums in Pakistan, whether they are the wives of senior civil and military officers or of political personalities in power, are inclined to think of themselves as national housewives, and, in that privileged position, they order people about, enjoy official facilities, treat their husbands’ PAs as their own and generally make a nuisance of themselves.

Administrative experts contend that half the corruption in the country owes itself to the begums’ demands and whims. This may be an exaggeration, though I can name a few members of the defunct CSP who lost their jobs because of their grasping wives. Other people may have kept count of other officers in other services like, say, engineering, income tax, police, etc. The allegations wouldn’t be far-fetched.

REPORTS appearing in the news media about the developments in Afghanistan suggest that the threat believed to be posed by Al Qaeda has become almost a worldwide phenomenon. The warning broadcast by Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, Osama bin Laden’s spokesperson, of the imminence of fresh Al Qaeda attacks on targets in the US has reinforced the assessment of the western intelligence agencies that Osama may have been driven out of Afghanistan but the terrorist network set up by him is far from having been eliminated.

According to Abu Ghaith, Al Qaeda will be carrying out its attacks on American targets “in the coming days and months.” Abu Ghaith’s warning was broadcast by the Al Jazeera network. He has also claimed that the Al Qaeda leader, despite the US-led war against terror, remains “intact.”

Initially, Abu Ghaith’s warning was received in the US with some disbelief. It was suggested that the statement was intended mainly to boost the waning morale of the Al Qaeda cadres. However, reports in influential western media now maintain that the warning should not be treated lightly. Bob Graham, chairman of the US Senate’s intelligence committee, has been quoted as saying that “what we have seen is a disturbing pattern of the reformulation of Al Qaeda and their willingness and capacity to conduct terrorist attacks.”

The White House, too, now believes that Osama is “probably alive” and “biding his time before mounting another attack.” There are insinuations that he may have crossed the border into Pakistan. The attack on a synagogue in Tunisia about a week ago that claimed 19 lives has been blamed on a young Al Qaeda activist. Defending the attack, Abu Ghaith has been reported as saying that the “young activist could not stand his brothers in Palestine being killed and their lands violated while the Jews moved freely and performed their religious rituals as they wished.”

The Scotland Yard’s “special anti-terrorism investigators” has been quoted as saying that they had “growing, darkening concerns” about the UK having unwittingly played a part in the development of Al Qaeda’s network by permitting fund-raising by terrorist outfits, turning a blind eye to money laundering and allowing Britain to be used as a “communication centre” by Al Qaeda cadres. What has come particularly as a surprise is a report carried by a leading British Sunday daily about (unidentified) “senior British officials” having accused the Americans of adopting a “gung-ho approach” to the hunt for the remnants of Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal territory adjoining Afghanistan.

A British official said to be involved in the direction of the war against terrorists in the UK has said: “The Americans think that they and the Pakistanis can just march in shooting; they don’t understand the sensitivities. We have years of experience in the tribal areas and we know that using force will just backfire and increase the sympathy for Al Qaeda.”

However, the well-known Indian journalist and author, M.J. Akbar, in his recent book dealing with the concept of Jihad, holds a different view concerning the American policy of “chasing the enemies in the region.” He contends that the initial American reluctance may have “stemmed partly from embarrassment, for many of the monsters had been created by a Frankenstein called CIA.” Akbar maintains that when in 1993 the FBI director, Robert Fox, suggested on TV that some of the World Trade Centre bombers (involved in an attack that did not quite achieve its objective) had received CIA training, he found a transfer order on his desk in a few weeks.

Bill Clinton, who was president then, decided not to be “squeamish” about going after them after terrorists belonging to Osama bin Laden’s group attacked American embassies in Dar-es-Salam, and Nairobi in East Africa in early 1998. He ordered missile strikes against Osama’s hide-out in Khost in Afghanistan but failed to eliminate Osama.

It is unfortunate that a large number of Pakistanis who have been living and working in the US for many years have been subjected to special investigation by the American authorities after the September 11 terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington. In fact, Pakistanis generally now find the environment in the US generally uncongenial, even hostile at times, for them. As many as 131 Pakistanis detained in American jails following the September 11 incidents were reported back to Pakistan last week. Many of them had disconcerting accounts of harassment and humiliation they had to endure on board a chartered Portuguese airliner. bringing them back to Pakistan.

According to one of the deportees, Pakistanis are treated contemptuously in the US since the Al Qaeda attacks last year. It is not easy to be sure about the veracity of such reports. However, Pakistan’s ambassador in Washington has taken up the matter with US authorities.

Last week, the US immigration authorities and FBI launched a joint investigation against 70 Pakistanis working in jewellery stores across the US. About the group of Pakistanis deported earlier to Pakistan the American officials said that 110 of them had been convicted of immigration violations, 22 of them for credit card fraud and others of narcotics, robbery or assault.

The US-led war against terrorism in Afghanistan may not have actually expanded eastwards into Pakistan, as some western Press reports suggest. However, its aftermath has had implications for Pakistan which are a matter of deep concern. Even after the installation of a transitional government in Kabul, the situation in that country continues to be disquieting and Pakistan continues to be vulnerable to its spillovers. The Taliban regime has been driven out of Kabul but its successor, the transitional government headed by Hamid Karzai has yet to consolidate its position. To quote the veteran columnist Jonathan Steele, Afghanistan is not “walking forward as firmly as it seemed six month ago” when the Taliban were driven out.

Pakistan has been directly affected by the developments in Afghanistan, particularly by the fallout of the military action against the Taliban and Al Qaeda and the intensive aerial bombardment of certain parts of the country. American commanders operating out of the Bagram air base have been quoted as saying that 400 to 1,000 Al Qaeda militants may be on the loose in the tribal areas in western Pakistan.

Ten Pakistani soldiers were killed the other day by the militants in a gun battle in the border town of Gul Kuch in South Waziristan. A 600-strong Pakistani force is hunting for the militants. The task is complicated because of the fact that Al Qaeda and the Taliban are not without their sympathisers in the region.

However, after about 23 years of war, civil war, violence and strife, the people of Afghanistan deserve respite. At the end of the war against the Soviet occupation in the 1980s, Brig Mohammad Yusuf and Mark Adkin in their book ‘The Bear Trap’ said: “The losers are most certainly the people... It is their homes that are heaps of rubble... their lands and fields that have been burnt... their husbands, fathers and sons who have died...” History should not repeat itself. The present war in Afghanistan should have a happy ending.

THE Israeli newspaper ‘Ha’aretz’ is not a fan of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s expansionist policy in the occupied Palestinian territories, so it understandably didn’t like US President George W. Bush’s Middle East speech of 24 June.

“Those millions of Israelis who are losing hope for an agreement to end the conflict by political means,” observed Gideon Samet, “now have confirmation from the leader of the West that for a long time to come, there won’t even be the beginning of movement.”

What Bush’s speech signalled was that there would be no peace talks until the terrorism stops, no pressure on Israel to compromise on territory, and enormous pressure on the Palestinians to dump Yasser Arafat in favour of someone even more pliable. The practical consequences of this taking of sides are that the terrorism will go on, the Palestinians will probably become even more radicalised, and the opportunities for Sharon to simply kill Arafat and use the resultant uprising as an excuse to clear Palestinians out of large parts of the West Bank will grow.

The speech was written in the White House, but it could have been written by Sharon’s office. Yet we should not assume (as ‘Ha’aretz’ crudely does) that Bush’s policy is driven simply by concern for the American Jewish vote. What it actually reveals is that the Bush administration’s main, and indeed almost sole foreign policy priority is the fight against ‘terrorism’.

This is what Bush himself has been saying all along, of course. It’s just that other people, particularly outside the United States, found it hard to believe that he was really going to concentrate on the ‘war against terrorism’ to the virtual exclusion of all America’s other interests in the world. Terrorism is a problem, certainly, but it ranks about tenth or twentieth in the order of the world’s problems for most people — as it did for most Americans, too, until the eleventh of September last.

Well, Bush meant what he said. Suicide bombings by Palestinian terrorists in Israel are, in his vision of things, a completely separate problem and a far worse evil than 35 years of Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, creeping colonisation that has now placed 42 percent of the Palestinian territories under the effective control of Israeli settlers, and a Palestinian death toll, since the beginning of this intifada, that is almost three times higher than the Israeli.

In the post-September 11 world, there is only one priority in American foreign policy. Suicide bombings are ‘terrorism’, and therefore part of that priority. Middle East peace is not.

Other things being equal, President Bush would doubtless love to be the sponsor of a Middle East peace settlement, but if it involves talking to terrorists, or anybody remotely associated with them, then it is ideologically unacceptable. So far as the Bush administration is concerned, all terrorists are the same: a purely irrational evil belonging not to the political world but to the same domain as cancer.

They are also all ten feet tall — a view which is shared by the US mass media and, so far as anybody can tell, the general American public. The ‘terrorist threat’, in the popular imagination, is as big and scary as the ‘Soviet threat’ was twenty years ago, even though the damage that terrorists could do is a thousand times less. The difference, of course, is that the terrorists of al-Qaeda actually did kill a few thousand Americans, whereas the risk of a war where ten thousand Soviet nuclear weapons would fall on the United States and kill a hundred million Americans, however real, always remained only potential.

It can’t be helped: the average person’s grasp of risk factors is so poor that it’s commonplace to meet cigarette smokers who worry about terrorism. American public opinion has been persuaded that the ‘terrorist threat’ to the United States is on a par with the now mercifully defunct risk of a world war, and the Bush administration has dedicated itself to waging a war on terrorism.

We need not quibble over how much this policy owes to political calculation and how much it is actual obsession. The point is that other American interests are going to be subordinated to this overriding objective.—Copyright