I HAVE come to the reluctant conclusion that there is no point in analyzing this government's actions according to common standards of right and wrong, so profound being this government's divorce from reality. People are concerned about other things. Our generals are operating on a wavelength all their own. There is little sign this gulf will ever close.

Just consider the flow of the General's arguments in his speech Thursday evening. At one point he said he feared no one except God and said the decision to let Nawaz Sharif go was not due to any panic. In almost the same breath he denounced Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto for trying to come together (in the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy) in order to loot the country once again. If nothing else, does not this textual evidence betray the suspicion that the General might have been protesting too much? Who helps him with his speeches?

But this is nitpicking. Instead of answering public concerns expressed in the wake of the Sharifs' great escape, the General merely reinforced the impression that like so many other things he and his colleagues had muffed this issue as well. The justifications offered were poor and would not satisfy the chairman of a union council: the departure of the Sharifs would usher in a new era of confrontation-free politics; it would be to the economic good of the country. Outwardly the General was calm. In his starched commando uniform he even looked impressive and stern. But this impression might best have been left for parachute jumping. It was of little help in a speech resting on weak arguments and riddled with inconsistencies.

There was also in it the rhetorical device to which most Pakistani rulers resort when they are in difficulties. General Musharraf said that the Almighty had chosen him to lead the Pakistani nation and it was the Almighty Who would guide him in this endeavour. In the lexicon of Pakistani leadership this is the oldest trick. If General Musharraf can use this argument, cannot Benazir and Nawaz Sharif say that they too were the chosen of the Almighty? And what about the more rounded scoundrels of Pakistani history - Yahya and Zia? Faith in God is the necessary weapon of every Muslim but why must it be used to condone failure? We are all here because of a grand design. So at least we believe. But how does this circumstance mitigate individual sin and folly?

In truth, however, I no longer have the heart to criticize this military government. It was fun doing so when people were looking upon General Musharraf as a messiah and expecting him to perform miracles. But when criticism of its performance has become near-universal there is no fun in joining the pack and running with the rest of the hounds. This government has been a disaster, no doubt about it. But at the same time, exceptions apart, it has not been a vicious or cruel government. Whether the times make repression more difficult I cannot say. But this much I can aver that as a journalist I have never felt more free or unfettered as during this period of extended ineptitude. During Nawaz Sharif's time I may not have deserved the midnight knock but I feared it. Not any more. I therefore have a vested interest in the continuation of this freedom and would hate to see it go under.

At this point may I be permitted to say that I have few illusions about press freedom. In their giddier moments journalists are wont to say they won this freedom through hard and protracted struggle. If so, I must have missed this Long March. Most newspapers that we now see got permission to publish in the Zia regime. Press curbs that remained were lifted by the interim government installed after Zia's death. As I say, if there was any life-and-death struggle for press freedom I missed it.

They say that the freest period in Russia was the Kerensky interlude between the fall of the Czarist monarchy and the triumph of the Bolshevik Revolution. Political activity was free and papers could publish what they liked. And although Lenin went into hiding the Bolshevik party preached revolution. In darker moments I am assailed by the thought that we are living through similar times, a discredited democracy having come to its natural death, an interlude of gathering uncertainty and freedom and ahead a dark future. In Russia's case the future was the long night of Stalinism. What might it be in our case?

When out for my lonely evening walks I sometimes think Stalinism to be the right medicine for us (provided of course I was not touched by its terror). But Stalinism and the transformation of Russia was not the work of pygmies. It was wrought by giant hands. Where are the giant hands in our puny and confused Republic? Stalinism or its oriental variant, Khomeinism, are therefore out as political options. What then remains? A choice between a pallid democracy, bumbling militarism and a crude fundamentalism, the last taking heart from the weakening writ of the Pakistani state and the triumph of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Note in the context of the last of these choices Qazi Hussain Ahmed's soaring vituperation. No one before him has ever called in quite the same words for the overthrow of a ruling general. Or termed a ruling general as a security risk. I can lay any bet that the Jamaat-i-Islami or anything like it will never come to power in Pakistan. The anger of the Furies cannot go that far. A Jamaat-dominated university or college is no place for learning. I shudder to think what a Jamaat-dominated country would be like. Certainly not worth living in. Still, it is a mark of the times that a political leader should be giving such open calls to sedition and rebellion. Another throwback to the anarchic freedom of the Kerensky era.

Many of the leading lights in this dispensation I personally know. This after all is my generation coming of age and coming to power - and making such a hash of both. Mahmood, master of ISI and the man who got things moving on October 12, was a year senior to me at Lawrence College. Amjad, formerly of NAB and now corps commander Multan, was also a year above me. Farooq Adam who has now left NAB was our senior by several years. Ehsan who now commands MI was with me at Kakul. Tanvir Naqvi I and many others were impressed by when we heard him talking during General Beg's Zarb-I-Momin exercise. General Musharraf I have had the privilege of meeting once or twice. He is what he comes across, a man without subterfuge (although for his sake and ours I wish he had some in him). Individually, all fine men. Collectively, a disaster.

If Major Nadir Pervaiz and the others had succeeded in overthrowing Bhutto in 1973 (the Attock Conspiracy Case) we would have seen much the same results because putschism is a dry political vessel and no answer to Pakistan's problems.

Still I ask, why are these men, all sound professionals, so clueless about politics? Do they have no idea of what they are doing and what opprobrium they are bringing on the army's head? They must get their act together or we've had it. The Kerensky period was good while it lasted. But after that came the deluge.

Why are these generals obsessed with politician-bashing? Why do they ignore the need for wise political counsel? Akbar had his Nine Jewels. Are these men greater than Akbar? The curtains have to be drawn around this shambles and the country taken out of the woods. But first this dyarchic method of government must end whereby corps commanders are acting like so many petty governors. To each his own. The corps commanders had better look to their troops while administration and road-inspecting were best left to others. And then, if the Fates be kind, a game-plan for democracy.

None of this is complicated mathematics. But for some odd reason the generals of my generation are having a hard time grasping even the rudiments of politics.