(This article was written during the Thanksgiving weekend, but is only being published now. General Musharraf is now "President" Musharraf - but given the circumstances of his transformation, these titles have no meaningful distinction, so I reproduce my original article as is.)
Since its creation sixty years ago, Pakistan has alternated between democracy and military rule every decade or so. So how many times are we going to watch a rerun of the same old movie, in which the U.S. government chooses to support a military dictatorship in Pakistan with money and arms rather than help its people sustain a liberal democracy? And, we choose to do this because it happens to serve our short-term interests better than it does their long-term future? While Pakistan has always been an invaluable ally in the conduct of U.S. foreign policy from the Kirkpatrick Doctrine of the 1980s to the Bush Doctrine of the 2000s, it invariably ends up as a discarded by-product when these doctrines have run their course.
President Bush must surely make a poor poker player. In June 2001, he misread the "honesty" of Russia's Putin by looking into his eyes to get a sense of his soul, which then subsequently proved to be non-existent. After 9/11 he similarly bought into the "sincerity" of Pakistan's Musharraf, who has also betrayed him by his recent actions. General Musharraf has turned out to be a run-of-the-mill dictator that Pakistan routinely produces every decade or so. Musharraf has repeatedly spoken the anti-terrorism language that Bush likes to hear, while acting consistently in an anti-democratic manner during his illegal reign. In this post-9/11 decade, the Bush Administration has spent almost $10 billion to-date on General Musharraf in the vain hopes that he would actually help us win the "war on terror" against an Al Qaeda-Taliban axis that permeates a significant yet nebulous cross-section of Afghani-Pakistani society.
Meanwhile the Bush Administration has more or less ignored the Pakistani people's ever increasing demands for a more meaningful democracy. Hollywood will soon release "Charlie Wilson's War," a movie which depicts how the U.S. coddled another Pakistani military dictator back in the 1980s – in order to get his support in throwing the Soviets out of Afghanistan. Ironically, after Pakistan had helped the U.S. achieve that important goal in 1989, the elder President Bush rewarded them by withholding deliveries of F-16 fighter jets as necessitated by the 1990 Pressler Amendment. Despite the Pressler sanctions, in 1998 Pakistan defiantly carried out its first nuclear test, which forced President Clinton to impose sanctions on a fragile nation in the waning phase of its democratic decade.
In the post-Soviet 1990s, Pakistan also helped an idling Afghan mujaheddin coalesce into the Taliban, which then usurped power in Afghanistan. The Taliban ruled Afghanistan up until 9/11 with an extremist ideology that included succor for Al Qaeda with the tacit support of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) branch of Pakistan's Army. Following 9/11, President Bush struck a Faustian bargain with Pakistan's relatively new military dictator, General Musharraf. In return for cash, arms, and the support of the U.S. government, President Bush sought Musharraf's assistance in crushing the very same Taliban, which Pakistan's military had previously helped create and flourish! Why the Bush Administration ever deemed this to be a winning proposition boggles the mind?
One of our founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin, had defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. So when is the U.S. foreign policy establishment going to realize that we need to pursue lasting relationships based on our core values and that we should not repeatedly experiment with unprincipled dalliances of convenience? If U.S. foreign policy continues to placate WMD-possessing military dictators, such as Pakistan's Musharraf and North Korea's Kim Jong Il, while sanctioning or attacking WMD-seeking despots, such as Iran's Ahmedinejad and Iraq's now-deceased Saddam Hussein, then we are only going to hasten the WMD acquisition process amongst so-called rogue nations. More importantly, such a dubious policy makes the U.S. lose credibility in the eyes of the world. Especially in the case of Pakistan, which – despite selling its nuclear technology to rogue nations such as Iran, Libya and North Korea – was seen by the world as getting a free pass from the Bush Administration?
Senator Biden was absolutely right when he suggested that the Bush Administration had a tunnel-vision "Musharraf policy" as opposed to a broad-based "Pakistan policy." It is highly likely that if General Musharraf really starts to feel pressured, he will direct his ISI to instigate suicide bombings – not in the Afghan border region, but near the line of control that demarcates India and Pakistan in Kashmir. The Pakistani military has always had this time-tested way to quickly unite Pakistanis and rev up patriotic fervor – by accusing neighboring India of "exploiting" a volatile situation in Pakistan. In fact, General Musharraf could even have his Army engage in a few border skirmishes with India to distract Pakistani attention from his domestic troubles – this too has been done before.
Nonetheless, the U.S. can no longer afford to maintain a double standard in its dealings with Pakistan – seeking to ensure the stability of this nuclear-armed dictatorship in the short-term at the expense of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for its people in the long term – because this will eventually turn out to be a losing proposition for both sides. Sadly, our 1980s paradigm will not help resolve the current crisis in Pakistan. At least back then, Pakistan's military dictator, General Zia, was actually helping us fight a common enemy (the Soviets). This time around, General Musharraf has suppressed the very symbols of Pakistani democracy – judges, lawyers, the media and opposition leaders – while the bad guys (Al Qaeda-Taliban) continue to openly and freely consolidate their strength.
However, it is not too late to refocus U.S. policy in Pakistan towards freedom and democracy – especially since promoting these core American values were the stated objectives of the Bush second term. Such a policy change is all the more imperative because it is the moderate and literate elements of Pakistani society that are clamoring for democracy and the rule of law. The great Pakistani paradox, which demands the reconciling of a functioning liberal democracy with the seemingly conflicting demands of an orthodox Muslim theology, can only be resolved by the duly elected moderate factions in its society. Pakistan could yet become a shining example of a Muslim democracy, provided its military stops intervening every time it foresees or fakes a "crisis." We would much rather have a nuclear-armed Pakistan run by prudent civilians than by an unpredictable army or some of its more extremist elements. This is the only way we can hope to bring real stability to that critical part of the world.
Thus President Bush should refrain from aiding Pakistan's collapse by sending any more ambiguous messages to General Musharraf. He might recall how a similar lack of clarity on the elder Bush’s part prompted Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait in 1990 – the long term repercussions of which President Bush is still dealing with today. In two of the past three decades, military dictators have happened to rule Pakistan when acquiescing Republican presidents have occupied the White House. General Zia received as much support from the Reagan Administration in the 1980s as General Musharraf has from the Bush Administration in the 2000s.
Yet Musharraf must already be looking beyond the Bush presidency. He probably recognizes that if a Democratic Administration takes over from Bush, it will be less tolerant of the status quo in Pakistan. So General Musharraf will try to continue to consolidate his hold on power over the next fourteen months. And, he is doing so by adopting a classic line from the Bush playbook – claiming that he is "temporarily" trading liberty for security in Pakistan's ongoing assistance with Bush’s "war on terror" – which seems to be receiving sympathetic consideration from the Bush Administration.
In a November 2003 address at the 20th Anniversary of the National Endowment for Democracy, President Bush had proclaimed, "Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe — because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty. As long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment, and violence ready for export. And with the spread of weapons that can bring catastrophic harm to our country and to our friends, it would be reckless to accept the status quo."
President Bush must surely realize that as long as our foreign policy continues to accommodate friendly dictators in allied Muslim nations such as Egypt, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, we are not going to make any real progress in the larger war on terrorism. If the president can't "walk his own talk" and continues to accept the status quo in Pakistan, how can he expect General Musharraf to behave any differently? If Musharraf is willing to pack his nation's Supreme Court with stooges and amend its constitution so that he can never be held accountable for his actions, he might as well appoint himself president for life and be done with it.
It is long past time for an American president to realize that the only way to avoid experiencing déjà vu all over again with our foreign policy is to let consistency in our principles trump the convenience of our causes, when these two ideals are in conflict. Also, in order to change hearts and minds in the Muslim world, we need to practice a less duplicitous foreign policy with our key Islamic allies. Only by refocusing our foreign policy on core American values, can we expect to make progress in Pakistan and the Muslim world. In fact, only by returning to a foreign policy that is solidly based on our cherished principles, can we regain the respect of the larger fraternity of nations? With the Annapolis summit in mind, now might be a good time for President Bush to send such an unequivocal message to the Arab world.
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Don’t Misunderestimate the Strategery – It’s Stay the Course!
Our first MBA president has taken the Drucker principle of management by objectives and turned it on its head. President Bush has instead managed by strategy and manipulated the objectives to fit the strategy. This has clearly been the case with his Iraq policy, where the president has used a very nebulous and ill-defined strategy, which has been consistently referred to as “staying the course.” And yet, the objectives in Iraq have been frequently manipulated – from finding WMD, then establishing democracy, to defeating the insurgency, etc. – all to fit the same adamant “stay the course” strategy.
In the first year of the war, the objective was pretty much to find Iraq’s WMD and President Bush was determined to “stay the course” until they were found. Following David Kay’s shocking “I don’t think they existed” revelation in January 2004 about Iraq’s WMD, and the Iraq Survey Group’s subsequent confirmation of the same, President Bush changed his objective for Iraq. Following his own reelection, and with Iraqis then voting in their first elections, President Bush’s objective for Iraq became,
Even more unfortunately, a month before President Bush stated this new lofty goal for Iraq, Vice President Cheney had already predicated “staying the course” by dismissing a growing insurgency as being “in its last throes.” In early 2006 a critical Shiite mosque in Samara was torched and much of central Iraq was overwhelmed by violence. So the Bush Administration changed its objective in Iraq yet again. The objective was no longer to build a liberal democracy but to focus on defeating a raging insurgency. Regrettably, the strategy to get there was essentially a “clear, hold, and build” version of “stay the course,” in the sense that it relied on Iraq’s notoriously unreliable security forces to do the “hold and build” part.
Meanwhile “staying the course” in Iraq for almost four years without tangible results did not go down well with the American public. So they expressed their displeasure in the 2006 mid-term elections by voting the president’s party out of power from both chambers in Congress. Shortly after, the Iraq Study Group (ISG) issued its recommendations and endorsed President Bush’s new post-election strategic goal for an Iraq that could
The new “surge” strategy relied on 30,000 more American troops to “clear, hold, and build” in and around Baghdad so as to bring down the violence and thus give Iraqis a chance at political reconciliation. Fortunately, even before the “surge” started, it benefited from unexpected success in the western Iraqi province of Anbar, where the local population turned against Al Qaeda insurgents. But sadly, the political apparatus in Baghdad far from reconciling began to fall apart as Sunni and Shia leaders began to desert the Al-Maliki government at regular intervals throughout the spring and summer.
By its very definition, a surge is a temporary phenomenon and hence the gains that come with it can also be transitory. The pockets of peace that have been established in the tribal areas of Iraq should thus be celebrated with caution. These nomadic desert tribes have had a history of transient and shifting loyalties. Nonetheless, to maintain these gains on the periphery, a strong central uniting force is absolutely critical. If an Iraqi Prime Minister is incapable of holding the center, a lasting peace will never come to Baghdad, and Iraq will eventually break apart.
Prior to the much anticipated Petraeus Report to Congress on September 10th, a couple of other independent sources, such as the General Accounting Office (GAO) and the Jones Commission also released their findings on post-surge Iraq. The GAO found that
Then, on the sixth anniversary of 9/11, General Petraeus testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee with his take on the “surge.” This is how ABC News reported one telling exchange between Senator John Warner and General Petraeus:
“Are you able to say at this time if we continue what you’ve laid before the Congress here as a strategy do you feel that is making America safer?” Warner asked.
“Sir, I believe that this is indeed the best course of action to achieve our objectives in Iraq,” Petraeus said.
“Does that make America safer?” Warner asked again.
“Sir,” Petraeus said, “I don't know actually.”
For having put General Petraeus in a position where he had to give such an answer, President Bush ought to feel ashamed. President Bush could not very well have made such a candid assessment himself, so he chose to hide behind General Petraeus. It is an even bigger shame that President Bush is thus politicizing our military by using its officers to effectively prolong his failed Iraq policy.
Following the 2006 mid-term elections and the subsequent Iraq Study Group report, President Bush made a gullible American public believe that his “surge” strategy would be different and its primary purpose would be to meet political objectives in Iraq. The “surge” has more or less given us the same old, same old. Nonetheless, President Bush and his die-hard supporters are intent on moving “forward to the past,” which is basically the same as “staying the course.” While the rest of us want to go “back to the future,” in which we could finally “give peace a chance.”
In an ironic case of real life imitating art, it is as if President Bush has all along been pleading with us not to “misunderestimate the strategery.” But seriously, how long can he muddle along in Iraq without further weakening our overstretched Army and Marines? How many more times are we going to hear that “the next six months are critical?” With no exit strategy in sight, when President Bush finally leaves office in January 2009, he is on track to leave behind not only a stalemate in Iraq, but also a broken military – that would be some legacy, indeed!
In the first year of the war, the objective was pretty much to find Iraq’s WMD and President Bush was determined to “stay the course” until they were found. Following David Kay’s shocking “I don’t think they existed” revelation in January 2004 about Iraq’s WMD, and the Iraq Survey Group’s subsequent confirmation of the same, President Bush changed his objective for Iraq. Following his own reelection, and with Iraqis then voting in their first elections, President Bush’s objective for Iraq became,
“a free, representative government that is an ally in the war on terror, and a beacon of hope in a part of the world that is desperate for reform.”Alas, his strategy to get there remained essentially to “stay the course.”
Even more unfortunately, a month before President Bush stated this new lofty goal for Iraq, Vice President Cheney had already predicated “staying the course” by dismissing a growing insurgency as being “in its last throes.” In early 2006 a critical Shiite mosque in Samara was torched and much of central Iraq was overwhelmed by violence. So the Bush Administration changed its objective in Iraq yet again. The objective was no longer to build a liberal democracy but to focus on defeating a raging insurgency. Regrettably, the strategy to get there was essentially a “clear, hold, and build” version of “stay the course,” in the sense that it relied on Iraq’s notoriously unreliable security forces to do the “hold and build” part.
Meanwhile “staying the course” in Iraq for almost four years without tangible results did not go down well with the American public. So they expressed their displeasure in the 2006 mid-term elections by voting the president’s party out of power from both chambers in Congress. Shortly after, the Iraq Study Group (ISG) issued its recommendations and endorsed President Bush’s new post-election strategic goal for an Iraq that could
“govern itself, sustain itself, and defend itself.”However, President Bush chose not to implement the ISG’s methodology of getting there. Instead in January 2007, President Bush finally announced a new “surge” strategy to be executed under the auspices of General Petraeus.
The new “surge” strategy relied on 30,000 more American troops to “clear, hold, and build” in and around Baghdad so as to bring down the violence and thus give Iraqis a chance at political reconciliation. Fortunately, even before the “surge” started, it benefited from unexpected success in the western Iraqi province of Anbar, where the local population turned against Al Qaeda insurgents. But sadly, the political apparatus in Baghdad far from reconciling began to fall apart as Sunni and Shia leaders began to desert the Al-Maliki government at regular intervals throughout the spring and summer.
By its very definition, a surge is a temporary phenomenon and hence the gains that come with it can also be transitory. The pockets of peace that have been established in the tribal areas of Iraq should thus be celebrated with caution. These nomadic desert tribes have had a history of transient and shifting loyalties. Nonetheless, to maintain these gains on the periphery, a strong central uniting force is absolutely critical. If an Iraqi Prime Minister is incapable of holding the center, a lasting peace will never come to Baghdad, and Iraq will eventually break apart.
Prior to the much anticipated Petraeus Report to Congress on September 10th, a couple of other independent sources, such as the General Accounting Office (GAO) and the Jones Commission also released their findings on post-surge Iraq. The GAO found that
“Iraq has failed to meet 11 of the 18 military and political objectives, or benchmarks, set by Congress and agreed on by Mr. Bush,”according to a New York Times report dated September 4th. A couple of days later, Retired Marine Gen. James Jones presented his commission’s conclusions to the Senate Armed Services Committee. Per a NPR report,
“while Gen. Jones noted that there have been what he called ‘tactical successes’ with the U.S. troop surge, he said that Iraq remains torn by sectarian strife.”
Then, on the sixth anniversary of 9/11, General Petraeus testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee with his take on the “surge.” This is how ABC News reported one telling exchange between Senator John Warner and General Petraeus:
“Are you able to say at this time if we continue what you’ve laid before the Congress here as a strategy do you feel that is making America safer?” Warner asked.
“Sir, I believe that this is indeed the best course of action to achieve our objectives in Iraq,” Petraeus said.
“Does that make America safer?” Warner asked again.
“Sir,” Petraeus said, “I don't know actually.”
For having put General Petraeus in a position where he had to give such an answer, President Bush ought to feel ashamed. President Bush could not very well have made such a candid assessment himself, so he chose to hide behind General Petraeus. It is an even bigger shame that President Bush is thus politicizing our military by using its officers to effectively prolong his failed Iraq policy.
Following the 2006 mid-term elections and the subsequent Iraq Study Group report, President Bush made a gullible American public believe that his “surge” strategy would be different and its primary purpose would be to meet political objectives in Iraq. The “surge” has more or less given us the same old, same old. Nonetheless, President Bush and his die-hard supporters are intent on moving “forward to the past,” which is basically the same as “staying the course.” While the rest of us want to go “back to the future,” in which we could finally “give peace a chance.”
In an ironic case of real life imitating art, it is as if President Bush has all along been pleading with us not to “misunderestimate the strategery.” But seriously, how long can he muddle along in Iraq without further weakening our overstretched Army and Marines? How many more times are we going to hear that “the next six months are critical?” With no exit strategy in sight, when President Bush finally leaves office in January 2009, he is on track to leave behind not only a stalemate in Iraq, but also a broken military – that would be some legacy, indeed!
Sunday, September 02, 2007
After Summer Surge, Comes Fall Purge?
Labor Day, which marks the official end of summer, is upon us. Let us hope that this year it marks an end to our discontent with the intense heat both, meteorologically and metaphorically. It was sad to see the President and Congress, who profess to “support our troops” at every opportunity they get, beat a hasty retreat from the hot August nights of Washington, D.C. Before they “got outta Dodge,” they could have at least afforded the same luxury to a few of our valiant troops, who continued to sizzle in the 130 degree heat of Baghdad.
In his July 20, 2007 column, the conservative chameleon Charles Krauthammer decided that after waiting 18 months “for the 80 percent solution,” he now feels comfortable switching sides to “the 20 percent solution.” This happens to be the same 20 percent of the population that ruled under Saddam Hussein’s Iraq – against whom President Bush launched this war, toppled its government, and then proceeded to quickly de-Baathify (akin to de-Sunnify) its new power structure.
Mr. Krauthammer speculated that
It is precisely this kind of arrogance and disdain that the Bush Administration has shown in its conduct of the Iraq war and its larger Middle East policy that aggravates and insults Muslim throughout the world. Mr. Krauthammer should have realized by now that his “purely American vision” is unlikely to solve the problem in Iraq and the larger Middle East.
So while he has been cooling off in Kennebunkport this August, President Bush hopefully reflected more deeply on the significance of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s recent visit with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Tehran. The two beaming leaders clutched hands, just like President Bush and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia did in Crawford, Texas back in April 2005. This renewed embrace by the two Shiite leaders of Iran and Iraq was a direct consequence of the Petraeus plan that unfolded in the Anbar province of western Iraq over the summer. It is no coincidence that the Maliki government was simultaneously deserted by Sunni leaders in the Iraqi Parliament just as the larger Sunni population began making its peace with U.S. forces west of Baghdad.
The current Shiite government in Iraq, which the Bush Administration helped elect and install, must have had a sense of déjà vu with the resurgence of Sunni power that was being aided by freshly supplied U.S. arms. How long then, it must have wondered, before a Saddam wannabe threatens to topple a duly-elected Shiite government by force? How long before the whole world is back to square one in Iraq?
So both, Democrats and Republicans might just want to reconsider the notion that the main problem in Iraq lies with Mr. Maliki. In order to get the surge to work in Baghdad, General Petraeus struck a deal with Sunni insurgents in Iraq’s western Anbar province. This peace has come at a big price – it not only drove Shiite Prime Minister Maliki into the arms of his Iranian sponsor Ahmedinejad in Tehran, but also got him to embrace Syrian strongman Bashir in Damascus. Rearmed Sunnis must surely have rekindled flashbacks of the Saddam era in the Shia leader’s mind.
Nonetheless, Maliki might just be smarter than we imagine – he could already be making plans for an Iraq after the U.S. leaves. Prime Minister Maliki might just pull of an early “October surprise” for the United States a full year before our own presidential elections – by calling for a phased withdrawal of American troops before President Bush has even had time to digest the Petraeus report. I suspect that Bush’s recent indictment of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and his subsequent Vietnam analogy could have been directed more at Maliki than at the American public?
The Bush Administration has always insisted that “we fight them over there, so that we don't have to fight them over here.” General Petraeus, in lock step with this viewpoint, recently told Rep. Jan Schakowsky that U.S. forces could be in Iraq for the next nine to ten years. Well, pulling out of Iraq might just turn that argument on its head. All manner of pundits have been predicting an all-out civil war in Iraq if we prematurely withdraw. However, there is more likely to be prolonged internecine warfare in the larger Middle East amongst the various Muslim factions – Sunni, Shia, Kurds, Hezbollah, Hamas, Al-Qaeda, etc – across multiple borders and involving at the very least Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, and the Palestine territories.
While these angry followers of Islam are thus engaged in sorting out their problems, the rest of the western world could be at peace, albeit, an expensive one. We might be forced to pay ten dollars a gallon for gas while it lasts, but in the long run that could well be well worth the price for peace and security in the homeland. More importantly, our overall price tag could be far less than the $500 billion that we have already spent on the Iraq war. Also, at $10 per gallon of gas, I am confident that American ingenuity would quickly develop alternative fuel sources that could rid us of what President Bush referred to as our “addiction to oil.”
In his July 20, 2007 column, the conservative chameleon Charles Krauthammer decided that after waiting 18 months “for the 80 percent solution,” he now feels comfortable switching sides to “the 20 percent solution.” This happens to be the same 20 percent of the population that ruled under Saddam Hussein’s Iraq – against whom President Bush launched this war, toppled its government, and then proceeded to quickly de-Baathify (akin to de-Sunnify) its new power structure.
Mr. Krauthammer speculated that
“Maliki & Co. are afraid we are arming Sunnis for the civil war to come. On the other hand, we might be creating a rough balance of forces that would act as a deterrent to all-out civil war and encourage a relatively peaceful accommodation. In either case, that will be Iraq’s problem after we leave.”
It is precisely this kind of arrogance and disdain that the Bush Administration has shown in its conduct of the Iraq war and its larger Middle East policy that aggravates and insults Muslim throughout the world. Mr. Krauthammer should have realized by now that his “purely American vision” is unlikely to solve the problem in Iraq and the larger Middle East.
So while he has been cooling off in Kennebunkport this August, President Bush hopefully reflected more deeply on the significance of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s recent visit with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Tehran. The two beaming leaders clutched hands, just like President Bush and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia did in Crawford, Texas back in April 2005. This renewed embrace by the two Shiite leaders of Iran and Iraq was a direct consequence of the Petraeus plan that unfolded in the Anbar province of western Iraq over the summer. It is no coincidence that the Maliki government was simultaneously deserted by Sunni leaders in the Iraqi Parliament just as the larger Sunni population began making its peace with U.S. forces west of Baghdad.
The current Shiite government in Iraq, which the Bush Administration helped elect and install, must have had a sense of déjà vu with the resurgence of Sunni power that was being aided by freshly supplied U.S. arms. How long then, it must have wondered, before a Saddam wannabe threatens to topple a duly-elected Shiite government by force? How long before the whole world is back to square one in Iraq?
So both, Democrats and Republicans might just want to reconsider the notion that the main problem in Iraq lies with Mr. Maliki. In order to get the surge to work in Baghdad, General Petraeus struck a deal with Sunni insurgents in Iraq’s western Anbar province. This peace has come at a big price – it not only drove Shiite Prime Minister Maliki into the arms of his Iranian sponsor Ahmedinejad in Tehran, but also got him to embrace Syrian strongman Bashir in Damascus. Rearmed Sunnis must surely have rekindled flashbacks of the Saddam era in the Shia leader’s mind.
Nonetheless, Maliki might just be smarter than we imagine – he could already be making plans for an Iraq after the U.S. leaves. Prime Minister Maliki might just pull of an early “October surprise” for the United States a full year before our own presidential elections – by calling for a phased withdrawal of American troops before President Bush has even had time to digest the Petraeus report. I suspect that Bush’s recent indictment of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and his subsequent Vietnam analogy could have been directed more at Maliki than at the American public?
The Bush Administration has always insisted that “we fight them over there, so that we don't have to fight them over here.” General Petraeus, in lock step with this viewpoint, recently told Rep. Jan Schakowsky that U.S. forces could be in Iraq for the next nine to ten years. Well, pulling out of Iraq might just turn that argument on its head. All manner of pundits have been predicting an all-out civil war in Iraq if we prematurely withdraw. However, there is more likely to be prolonged internecine warfare in the larger Middle East amongst the various Muslim factions – Sunni, Shia, Kurds, Hezbollah, Hamas, Al-Qaeda, etc – across multiple borders and involving at the very least Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, and the Palestine territories.
While these angry followers of Islam are thus engaged in sorting out their problems, the rest of the western world could be at peace, albeit, an expensive one. We might be forced to pay ten dollars a gallon for gas while it lasts, but in the long run that could well be well worth the price for peace and security in the homeland. More importantly, our overall price tag could be far less than the $500 billion that we have already spent on the Iraq war. Also, at $10 per gallon of gas, I am confident that American ingenuity would quickly develop alternative fuel sources that could rid us of what President Bush referred to as our “addiction to oil.”
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
The Pakistani Paradox
There was a disconcerting common thread in Moshin Hamid's rather reluctant celebration of Pakistan's 60th birthday on the editorial pages of the August 15th New York Times. It turns out that Pakistan has been “a steadfast American ally” whenever it happened to be under military rule as was true with Gen. Mohammad Ayub Khan in the 1960s, Gen. Muhammad Zia ul-Haq in the 1980s, and Gen. Pervez Musharraf in the 2000s. Ironically, General Musharraf was also quite the American media darling when he was peddling his book last year – even making a coveted appearance on Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show.” However, given all the recent negative press, it has become rather apparent that the General has long since fallen out of favor.
As the reluctant fundamentalist’s article implies, and those of us who grew up in the Indian subcontinent are keenly aware, military dictators have never ever been as good for Pakistan as they have been for the United States. In keeping with this tradition, General Musharraf has had his illicit turn but now his time is up. The purported power-sharing agreement that he has been trying to finalize with ex-Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto would be bad for both Pakistan and the United States – ipso facto, the idea having emanated out of the Bush Administration, it would surely be unpalatable to the larger Pakistani population.
Since 9/11 General Musharraf has been consistently accused of having it both ways in trying to balance his covert support for the Taliban versus his overt allegiance to the Bush Administration in hunting down Al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan. One could infer that President Bush has also been trying to play it both ways with Pakistan, given his bold pronouncement following 9/11 to be resolute against “any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism.” Despite knowing for a long time now that “Taliban and Qaeda fighters continue to find shelter and support on Pakistan’s side of the Afghan border,” President Bush has not acted decisively against them. The New York Times reported recently that the Bush Administration scrubbed “a 2005 American attempt to capture Qaeda leaders on Pakistani soil.”
Pakistan is and has always been the “Rodney Dangerfield” of nations – unable to command any respect. In fact, General Musharraf's confession to 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft during his book promotion interview last September confirms this viewpoint. Per the General’s own account, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage made a very blunt threat to Pakistan’s Director of Intelligence:
As the reluctant fundamentalist’s article implies, and those of us who grew up in the Indian subcontinent are keenly aware, military dictators have never ever been as good for Pakistan as they have been for the United States. In keeping with this tradition, General Musharraf has had his illicit turn but now his time is up. The purported power-sharing agreement that he has been trying to finalize with ex-Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto would be bad for both Pakistan and the United States – ipso facto, the idea having emanated out of the Bush Administration, it would surely be unpalatable to the larger Pakistani population.
Since 9/11 General Musharraf has been consistently accused of having it both ways in trying to balance his covert support for the Taliban versus his overt allegiance to the Bush Administration in hunting down Al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan. One could infer that President Bush has also been trying to play it both ways with Pakistan, given his bold pronouncement following 9/11 to be resolute against “any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism.” Despite knowing for a long time now that “Taliban and Qaeda fighters continue to find shelter and support on Pakistan’s side of the Afghan border,” President Bush has not acted decisively against them. The New York Times reported recently that the Bush Administration scrubbed “a 2005 American attempt to capture Qaeda leaders on Pakistani soil.”
Pakistan is and has always been the “Rodney Dangerfield” of nations – unable to command any respect. In fact, General Musharraf's confession to 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft during his book promotion interview last September confirms this viewpoint. Per the General’s own account, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage made a very blunt threat to Pakistan’s Director of Intelligence:
“Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age.”Herein lies the Pakistani paradox, which appears to be a dilemma that actually confronts most Muslim nations – how to reconcile the requirements for a functioning liberal democracy against the seemingly conflicting demands of an orthodox Muslim theology? Democracy did not seem to be the perfect solution for India in 1947, but both democracy and a secular India have managed to survive and prosper through some tumultuous times. Pakistan could yet become a shining example of a Muslim democracy, provided its military stops stepping in every time it foresees or fakes a “crisis.” And, more importantly, the next time a military officer dares to overthrow an elected government in Pakistan, the United States should use whatever means necessary to force him back into his barracks.
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