More of the same
NO sooner had the hijacked airliners smashed into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon than a chorus of pundits hurried into media spotlights to declare with suitably furrowed brows that “everything has changed” - though few bothered to tell us what changed or for whom. It sounded like such a terribly wise thing to say. Who could resist?
Anyone beholding what Ariel Sharon clearly sees as only an intermission in his assault on the West Bank, the crude wheeling and dealing among Afghan warlords, America’s instinctive unilateralism, and the well-heeled and well-connected everywhere getting their way, may be forgiven for scratching their head and wondering what, apart from airport security hassles, is so very different. Perhaps closer to the mark is the cynical observation by a fictional 19th century Sicilian aristocrat in Giuseppe Di Lampedusa’s novel The Leopard that “if things are going to stay the same, things will have to change.” That far, and no further.
Anyone who so blithely welcomes change usually believes that it favours themselves. September 11 certainly was a national tragedy for America, but any national tragedy also is a golden opportunity to peddle agendas which some solemn mourners had in their back pockets awaiting the right moment.
So what exactly has changed? Has President Bush been deflected from, or even reflected upon the wisdom of, his policies? Can the Israelis no longer do no wrong? The intensified Israeli-Palestinian conflict has brought no genuine shift in official American attitudes. Bush uses the words ‘terrorist’ and ‘terrorism’ indiscriminately but only casually mentions the “fact on the ground” of the Israeli occupation, without calling it precisely that. Bush evidently was willing to back a hard-line Israeli government all the way to Armageddon, if necessary, until international pressure forced him to wag a finger at Sharon.
Meanwhile, the US news media treats the public to skewed reports, such as expressed in the recent headline “Israel Closes in on Arafat” (Chicago Tribune), as if no one knew where Arafat was. (Whatever happened to Osama?) Arafat is portrayed as a malignant magician who transforms wild youths into disciplined kamikazes at the snap of his fingers, and for no other reason. The average American reader can hardly help but imagine that Israelis and Palestinians are evenly matched. Americans relentlessly are told the whopping lie that the Israelis offered Arafat 97 per cent of what he desired. Hence, only ‘beasts’, as some right-wing Israelis call Palestinians, could reject this wonderful offer.
This carefully cultivated misinformation is nothing new in America where privileged pundits, who spout the ‘97 per cent’ tell-tale, complain that Al-Jazeera is brainwashing a gullible Arab world. Yet, many Americans are growing deeply disenchanted with Israeli tactics. The April 20 march in Washington DC by approximately a hundred thousand protesters was a stirring sign.
US Attorney-General Ashcroft is plainly determined that citizens be stripped of civil liberties whose exercise might impede anything his boss wants to do. In war-time conditions Americans tend to suspend critical scrutiny of government. Yet America doesn’t bother to declare war on anyone anymore (so it need not observe the rights of POWs). That’s nothing new. (Ask the Vietnamese who shocked American officials by logically treating captured US fliers as criminals).
In Britain a Tony Blair aide was fired last month when her leaked memo burbled that post-September 11 was a jolly good pretext for “burying” unpleasant news and for promoting desired schemes in a compliant public atmosphere. Another Blair adviser fatuously remarked that imperialism wasn’t such a bad thing after all — and urged that Britain get back in that traditional business. Was this just bar room talk? Well, yes. But it’s nothing new, not even in Labour party circles.
A conservative US administration — brimming with smug multimillionaires who in business careers were unaccustomed to democratic practices — punched through a 48 billion defence spending boost, despite government studies demonstrating with crystal clarity that the Pentagon is by far the most wasteful and fraud-ridden government agency. But, like Enron, defence firms are key campaign contributors. For the Bush administration, after the easy Afghan victory, multilateralism and cooperation again were viewed with great suspicion, as unbearable constraints. Bush duly recognized the legitimate aspiration for a Palestinian state, but these welcome words faded as soon as he deduced that Arab nations no longer need be appeased.
Quite likely Bush even now only wants the Middle East to calm down long enough for the US to invade Iraq. Is this reflexive reversion to raw realpolitik anything new? America enlisted Pakistan as an ally of utmost convenience. But the anticipated trade benefits remain invisible and there is no perceptible change in policy regarding Kashmir. American policy-makers are happier with obliging generals than unruly democrats, as the aborted coup in Venezuela reaffirms. Under IMF and World Bank pressure, commodity prices have risen in Pakistan as subsidies were withdrawn. That’s the IMF gospel in action.. American military forces establish bases in more countries, which they will not leave anytime soon — a familiar phenomenon. The struggle for control of energy resources in Central Asia is nothing new. Ask Taliban representatives who a few years ago were “wined and dined” by a US oil company. The imposition of stringent censorship in the Afghan war and the West Bank is nothing new, even though stupid censorship breeds alarming rumours of mass atrocities which no one can check. As for Afghan women, an American acquaintance who works for an NGO reports that she was unable to roam around in Kabul last month without donning a burqa. Is this a changed world?
Anything is still justified if you do it in the name of security. New Yorkers find Congress reneging on $20 billion aid piously promised after the Twin Tower attacks, while major airlines get billions in subsidies, which their discarded workers will not share. A cruel penny-pinching attitude toward the poor everywhere is nothing new. In the early 1990s President Bush Senior’s ballyhooed new world order was intended to be safe primarily for multinationals and investors — and Bush junior shares his dad’s “vision thing.” US special forces comb Columbia, the Philippines and South Asia for insurgents who may have little truck with Al Qaeda but do make business interests nervous.
Dispatching troops to crush anyone who hinders the right of corporations to do as they please is nothing new. A century ago American marine General Smedley Butler, a veteran of many US “expeditions” in Latin America, declared afterwards that he was ashamed that for all his ribbons and rank he was merely a hired hit man for American industrialists.
Has anything changed for the better? Well, the world was treated briefly to the stirring sight of a superpower exercising judicious restraint whilst soliciting coalition support for the Afghan campaign A little prudence can still go a long way. A truly changed world is one where America would not endorse Israel unstintingly in whatever harm it inflicts on others and, no less important, on itself. Israeli actions only succeed in stirring fierce opposition in the long term, not to mention, sheer ugly anti-Semitism.
The US, like Israel, conveniently defines terrorism as actions by parties which operate against its own interests, and ignores any other kind. So there are no terrorists inside Israeli gun turrets or cockpits. The US policy course thus far favours diehards on all sides, and alienates not only the Muslim world but anyone who sympathizes with an occupied people under pitiless pressure fighting back desperately. As a result, is America invulnerable to terrorist attacks? Is Israel? Are they both more secure? A superpower (the US) and a major regional power (Israel) are again learning the hard way that short-term thinking and facile labels are no solution to their problems. Learning the hard way is nothing new, but it provides the best hope for positive change.
Choosing an order, not a candidate
WHETHER those at the slippery top like to or not, they will have to concede that the presidential referendum, despite the earlier vastly diverting dress-rehearsals of success, miscarried abysmally. As we all know, prior to the event, expectations had run inordinately high. If, subsequently, they got to be doused with more than a few cusecs of cold water, why not admit it?
The people of this country, long accustomed to such situations, have not been unduly incensed by the authorities for, in the grand, time-honoured tradition, fixing things. If anything, they are amused at the artlessness and transparency, the overall gaucherie, with which the exercise would appear to have been carried out. Much glee was certainly elicited among our self-appointed monitors who, simply to test the vaunted ‘fairness’ of the referendum, blithely cast their multiple votes unchecked.
Of course, there is a considerable comic element too to the tight-lipped response to the president’s referendum by the international community who have, in most cases, held their selectively fastidious noses and looked the other way. It is especially intriguing to observe that, while the White House can cope admirably with the stench of distant cadavers, it finds itself just a trifle embarrassed in the face of what has simply been — tenuous turnout and all — a rather badly botched up electoral job. It would be salutary for our bigwigs to bear in mind, in this context, that the western world in particular does not happily countenance error in the realm of form.
Naturally, though, if only because neither our national concerns nor the moral and legal implications of the recent referendum, along with a fractional sense of attendant national shame, can be denied, it is all also singularly unfunny. The nation has to live, helplessly, at least for the time being, with the knowledge of trust betrayed, of invidious assumptions regarding the limits of its intelligence and, more ironically, the limitlessness of its tolerance.
Yet the people of this country can scarcely be charged with being either insensitive or simple or, for that matter, politically inert. To level such a charge, is only to tempt fate. It is, in a way, to challenge two abiding verities: of a perpetual popular struggle, democratic or otherwise, at a global level and, in tandem with this, of the inexorable march of history. This is something of which the NRB, as supposed prime mover of the referendum, should today surely be taking stock. It should simultaneously have noted that the referendum has merely served to show up the flaw in the thesis that military rule is or can be effective other than by dint of force. If this is anything to go by, the examples of regimented, as opposed to spontaneous, voting at the referendum were both fairly numerous and irrefutable. The referendum has also brought to light or, in effect, to a head the fundamental contradiction between militarily bolstered oligarchical rule and what we commonly think of as democracy. Why else did the MQM fall out with the government at the very last moment on the eve of the referendum? Why, instead, was there a paralysing strike in Karachi on referendum day itself?
This, clearly, has to do with the irreconcilable gap between authoritarian and democratic discourse, between the arbitrary and malafide language of the military-led government and that, for instance, as reflected in his party’s perfectly democratic referendum day protest, of an Altaf Hussain. So the claim to popular ‘democratic’ leadership on the part of the good general is both theoretically and practically untenable. It would appear that he has all along simply been confusing categories, indulging in highly improbable political cross-dressing. The result is a little unfortunate. We are at best reminded of the ironic paradigm of the emperor’s new clothes.
For all President Musharraf’s and his apparatchiks’ efforts and in spite of the illusion of a political void carefully fostered by them, our more significant political leaders have effectively managed to preserve their respective locus standi as well as vote banks. That, at any rate, would seem to have been one of the inverse benefits of the referendum, on otherwise lacklustre affair where what was registered, if by default, was a reverberant ‘yes’ to democracy rather than anything else.
It is possible that President Musharraf has come a little late to a realization of the need for political pragmatism. But come he has, as he himself coyly confessed in a an earlier re-referendum TV address to the nation. By that very token, he should perhaps start by coming to terms with certain stark political realities. The country’s major political parties — the PPP, PML (N), MQM, ANP, JI and so on — are all here to stay and cannot be wished away. Their leadership too, whether in exile or at home, is intact and still very much in charge. And let us not forget that these are not just plain political parties, but entirely valid and formidable representative forces. So, if democracy is on the government’s agenda, no purpose will really be served in taking them, singly or collectively, on. Repressive measures can only prove counter-productive.
In any case, the philosophy of repression is, at some level, out of sync with both modernity and humanity. Then, it does not look good, especially from a human rights angle, to brutalize one’s own people. Also, from a perceptible position of moral and political weakness, it does not work. If it did not seem like asking for the moon one might say that a policy of sweet reasonableness, of compromise and conciliation, would be more in order.
In point of fact, it would make most sense for President Musharraf to take on board those very forces he at present appears to be shunning. In so far as they are in a known democratic majority in the country, they alone, rather than any motley electoral alliance or king’s party, could help him effect a smooth transition to a viable democratic order, if that is the desired objective. We say ‘viable’ since that is the only plausible variety of democracy that can possibly be hoped for here.
It is all too easy to argue, as a recent western commentator has, that the democratic genus peculiar to South Asian countries leaves much to be desired. However, the argument is one that is merely specious in not taking account of the given, highly disadvantageous socio-economic and demographic conditions of those countries. These conditions have served as very real stumbling-blocks in the way of the evolution of worthier democratic forms. Such commentators would do better to laud this region for those systems in it which are, above all, not dysfunctional or happen to actually work.
As far as the president’s own dream of ‘true’ democracy is concerned, one fears that it is going to remain just that: a dream. In any case, he should have learnt from his experience of the referendum that there are not too many people in the country who actually share any of his miscellaneous dreams. Here lies the rub. The people of Pakistan have their own dreams and their own independent notions as regards a desirable social order for their country. And that surely is what democratic choice is all about: the right to choose, in an election, not just a given candidate but the order he or his party stands for.
That is why democracy has to do with pluralism, with a multiplicity of democratic choices, not merely the one irresistible choice which has been pre-emptively made for the real sovereigns. Yet, whatever the case, President Musharraf has every reason to be pleased with himself. He may be a dictator but there are many who, according to a piece of local wisdom, still “grin and bear it.”
Ashcroft’s gunslinger style
SO now Attorney General John Ashcroft thinks he gets to rewrite the Constitution to reflect his personal opinions. His pronouncement last week that the 2nd Amendment guarantees individuals the right to own guns, despite six decades of federal policy and US Supreme Court decisions to the contrary, is another audacious move by a man who mistakenly thinks his job is to make, not enforce, the law.
Ashcroft’s declaration came in footnotes in two briefs the Justice Department filed in pending appeals. In them, he rejects the long-held interpretation that the 2nd Amendment guarantees gun rights only to militias, not individuals.
He declares, “The current position of the United States is that the 2nd Amendment more broadly protects the rights of individuals who are not members of any militia to possess and bear their own firearms, subject to reasonable restrictions designed to prevent possession by unfit persons or to restrict the possession of types of firearms that are particularly suited to criminal misuse.”
Since the 1930s, the federal government and the courts, including the Supreme Court, have spoken with one voice in declaring that people have no constitutional right to own a gun and that government can pass laws restricting gun possession.
Ashcroft’s “reasonable restrictions” language is so narrow as to turn 2nd Amendment law inside out by guaranteeing that individuals are entitled to own guns unless they fit a few defined exceptions. The attorney general is wrong in his characterization of federal law, which has historically elevated government’s right to regulate weapons over individual rights. And as an appointed official, he’s way out of line in insisting that his own views prevail over those of the elected representatives charged with writing laws and judges whose job it is to interpret them.
Ashcroft first expressed his views more than a year ago to the National Rifle Association. As an NRA member, he’s entitled to his opinion. —Los Angeles Times