Until our leaders become sophisticated trouble-shooters, we will be the butt of jokes by twerps in Washington DC
While the Newsweek story and retraction drama continue to unfold, the cartoon caper in The Washington Times and a measly apology from its editor as well as Pakistan’s knee-jerk response require some reflection.
Quit carping. Whining too won’t get you anywhere, Chaudhry Sahib. Nor will suing the pugs at The Washington Times work. These sly old dogs can’t stop laughing at you and your chest-beating crack-brained politicos. They think you so country bumpkin, the newspaper has actually devoted a full editorial to Pakistanis being a priggish lot.
So thanks Ch Shujaat Hussain for providing habitual Pakistan-bashers like The Washington Times and The Times of India a wide berth to giggle at our expense. Every dog has his day (and times) so both the Times splashed headlines like “Washington Times cartoon sets Pakistan on fire” yelped The Times of India while the opinionated doggies at Washington Times editorialized in a self-congratulatory whelp that you, Mr Hussain, and your government (foolishly) bequeathed more importance to this newspaper than it actually merited: “In an unexpected ‘tribute’ to the long reach of the influence of this newspaper, the Pakistani parliament adopted, unanimously, a resolution decrying Mr Garner’s cartoon, and the Pakistani embassy has protested ‘an insult to the sentiments of the people of both Pakistan and the United States as it strengthens the hands of the extremists.’ This imputes more power to a mere newspaper than any newspaper deserves.”
Let me add here that this newspaper is unknown even to most Americans. For good reason. It’s a rag.
Unable to contain their mirth at the Pakistani politicians who have demanded an apology from “no less than the president of the United States,” the editorial continued: “The suggestion that any American newspaper speaks for the government or a president betrays a profound ignorance of how America works. If an American president could prevent newspaper cartoonists from insulting, reviling, abusing, affronting and ‘dissing’ politicians, he would not exercise this power in behalf of anyone but himself. Newspaper cartoonists have been insulting, reviling, abusing, affronting and ‘dissing’ presidents for more than a century, and all that presidents can do about it is grin, bear it and ask for the originals, for framing and display on desk or wall.”
Do you get it, Ch Shujaat and the Foreign Office spokesman who should know better than join in the brouhaha? Jalil Abbas Jilani doesn’t deserve to be the FO spokesman if he hasn’t woken up to the reality that in America the press is free. He needs to be shaken up and scolded in no uncertain terms for asking Washington to conduct an inquiry to see if it was a deliberate attempt to “ridicule” Pakistan.
But back to doggies and the lovesick relationship Americans have with them. The excess this is taken to is revolting.
Every day I look out of my window to see some silly old owner cleaning up after the dog has done the ‘big job’. How can these people walk around with plastic shopping bags solicitously scooping up dog poop from the pavement and the grass while taking their pet on a stroll?
Yes, yes, yes ... we all know and don’t need that Washington Times editorial to educate us on dogs being regarded “as one of God’s greatest gifts, one of the noblest expressions of patience, loyalty, kindness and devotion”.
Billions are spent on their gourmet food and doggie doctors (while half the world goes to bed hungry and half of America is without medical insurance). Oh, those flashy canine ads on TV make you puke — the owner licking up the food on all fours to coax the dog to try it too. Yuk. Or ingesting dog spit and loving it. Yikes.
Their dogs sleep with them, kiss them, paw them. And their stink? Don’t ask. It’s unbearable and yet these so-called civilized Americans live with that awful dog smell which permeates their homes. These ‘dirty ole dogs’ don’t seem to notice it even.
Talk about stink, the dogs of war in Washington DC — in a zero sum game of tearing Pakistan into pieces — are back to their dirty old tricks. The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom wants America to blacklist Pakistan and some other countries for violation of religious freedom and beliefs.
Guess who is the chair of this “independent”, “bipartisan” commission set up by the US Congress, and funded by the American government?
Hold your breath — it’s an Indian original.
And what does this thirty something “overachiever” recommend? Preeta Bansal has asked the Bush administration to blacklist Pakistan and to forgive India for the Gujarat carnage by removing its name from the US government’s list of “countries of particular concern” because in the almond-shaped eyes of Ms Bansal there’s “significant” improvements in India since the defeat of the ruling Hindu nationalist BJP in 2004 polls.
Wow, what logic.
And the beauty? The Congress and the White House buy it. (Why else would they handpick an Indian-American to head this prestigious commission? Surely they should know better than to appoint someone whose country of birth and people scorn its smaller neighbour, Pakistan.) Who is this baby-faced, chubby chucker that Washington worships? Finding her irresistible, The New York Times in 1999 was quite smitten with Preeta Bansal’s “mind [that] is efficient as well as dazzling” ... “[it’s] all the more remarkable, given that Ms Bansal has moved from childhood in India, to girlhood in Lincoln, Nebraska, to her current position as New York State’s solicitor-general — with pit stops at Harvard, the Supreme Court and the Clinton White House — in just 33 breathless years.”
Having lawyered her way to Washington DC, Bansal now chairs the powerful commission with commissioners linked to Jewish concerns and anti-Islam sentiments. Her vice-chair, Felice Gaer, is the director of the Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights of the American Jewish Committee. Her co-chair Nina Shea has co-authored a newly-released book on governance by extreme sharia, Radical Islam’s Rules, and authored a book on anti-Christian persecution around the world entitled In the Lion’s Den.
Bansal told the press last week that Pakistan had “engaged in or tolerated particularly severe violations of religious freedom”.
Pakistan’s Foreign Office retort was equally fluffy as Bansal’s accusations: Unsure and gobbledygook. “All citizens of Pakistan irrespective of their religious beliefs enjoy complete freedom of expression and there is absolutely no discrimination,” said the vacuous statement.
Go get Bansal, I say to our doggie demagogues renting the Islamabad air with cries of revenge and getting the old warrior Gen (retd) Jehangir Karamat’s second-in-command Sadiq all peevish with Washington Times over a cockamamie cartoon.
Stop wasting everybody’s time on this dog chase, I say. Instead, clean up your dog act; put in place a pack of brainy hounds of Pakistani-American pedigree (and let’s have cubs, not those doggone seniors who never get kennelized) to confront pit bull terriers like Bansal and her litter of Indian lobbyists on Capitol Hill.
Let’s stop being pups and playing the lovesick puppy game: ‘India loves me, it loves me not.’ India will never love Pakistan. Get it?
So Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, no matter how many love duets you and the Indians sing in Punjabi, spare yourselves the bother and save your breath for bigger dogfights, the thought of which perhaps is beyond you.
Until our dogmatist leaders uprise into more sophisticated trouble-shooters, I regret to wager, we will be the butt of jokes by twerps in Washington DC.
Until our leaders become sophisticated trouble-shooters, we will be the butt of jokes by twerps in Washington DC
But back to doggies and the lovesick relationship Americans have with them. The excess this is taken to is revolting.
Guess who is the chair of this “independent”, “bipartisan” commission set up by the US Congress, and funded by the American government?
