Yes, I do believe the General Saab has lost a few marbles, but I think he has still a number of good years left in him before he goes totally bonkers.
——Pakistan’s banned opposition leaders, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, must be allowed to return and wage free elections. ———
Over our dead bodies! Those two deserve a firing squad.
Btw, have you seen Nawazoo’s new hair transplant? Where did he get all that hair from? I don’t want to know and neither would you.
Poppycock article.
Posted by The Questioner at May 21, 2007 02:02 PM
The general has indeed bend over backwards so many times to please foreign powers that his head has come almost full circle and is now up his ass! He can’t see for shit, no pun intended! It’s time for this worthless piece of meat to be assassinated and there are a helluva lot of people in the country who would be willing to do it, not the least of whom are the denizens of the tribal west.
Bhutto and Sharif back? Mr. Margolis, are you serious? These two sucked the country dry and paid off tens of millions to their cronies and have foreign bank accounts oozing with money stolen from the country! These two deserve to be thrown off of K2.
Posted by haye49 at May 21, 2007 04:33 PM
Another take on the Pakistan situation…
http://www.economist.com/world/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9189311
I tend to agree with some comments in the article in that Musharraf has done more good than harm for Pakistan, and for South Asia in general. The revision of some very ugly laws is a welcome change (fornication laws, for example), as is a healthy economic growth rate and an almost unilateral effort to put an end to the Indo-Pak political/military rivalry over Kashmir. But apparently these strides have come with costs, not the least of which is Musharraf’s humility, and the personal freedoms of Pakistanis in general. I’m not sure how free Pakistanis were before Musharraf’s coup, but his effort to sack a justice who has clearly taken a very populist and pro-individual-rights position is interesting, if poorly calculated.
On another note, I can’t say I’ve ever heard of a president moving to sack the head of the judiciary before.
Posted by chatman at May 21, 2007 06:51 PM
Incidentally, we here in America don’t like him very much either; he’s not enough of a lap dog for the likes of Congress, and Newt Gingrich has gone as far to suggest that we should invade Pakistan… of all the nonsense.
I feel bad for the guy. I really think he has done a lot of good; it might be best for him to leave office on a (somewhat) high note.
Posted by chatman at May 21, 2007 06:54 PM
Chatman:
I agree with you that he has done more good than harm. Margolis, mentioning Bhutto and Nawazoo, has proven his bias against Pakistan and it’s people, so I don’t care what he sez on this topic.
I will give you a little example from which you can judge how “free” we were before Mushi, and how free now.
Before Mushi, Nawazoo was allergic to information technology. He more or less blocked the creation of te cable tv industry in this country. I had to watch Govt. propaganda shit channels only. And I could only use the internet with a dial-up modem or mobile phone, period.
Mushi, just let everyone be. Because of that we I get over 100 channels and I don’t watch Govt. shit anymore. I use DSL which is available everywhere.
New newspapers have come up, news channels, and newspaper owners have been given the permission to have their own Tv channels. I don’t feel blind or suffocated anymore.
Pakistan has 60 million mobile phone users. This wasn’t possible under Nawazoo when you had to pay for recieving a call. Imagine that. Now using a mobile phone is as cheap as normal phone even for international calls.
Nawazoo was a small-minded control freak. Benny was a crook.
As for Mushi firing the CJ… he didn’t. The President, under the law, does have the right to suspend him until a judicial hearing takes place (which he did). The Supreme Court judges then fire him. Everything was done quite legally. The rest is all politics as it is widely known that the CJ wants to become President of this country. Ambitious bastard, that one.
Posted by The Questioner at May 21, 2007 11:55 PM
Very simply, the more Mushi is perceived to be America’s guy, the more tattered his image is going to get.
It was suggested that we should have a law that nobody could become President whose kids live or work in the US. That was a great suggestion.
This fool’s style is that all you got to do is touch him, he does a backward judo flip. Too accommodating to outsiders (as we see it). People forget, the Americans don’t like him too much either. LOL
Pakistan’s people want a President who acts like the late great Kruschev of the Soviet Union, banging his shoe on a desk at the UN. They want him to throw his wait around (what the hell are all those nukes good for?) instead of judo-flipping through life.
Posted by The Questioner at May 22, 2007 12:04 AM
…throw his weight around… oops
Posted by The Questioner at May 22, 2007 12:06 AM
I can’t believe that Eric actually wrote that “Washington needs to press Musharraf to retire…”
Eric must be joking, or maybe he has the flu or something. Eric himself points out that Washington has no interest in democracy, most especially for “those” people. (non Anglo-Saxon). To think that Washington would be willing to lose an ally to in the name of democracy is absurd.
I’m no expert on Pakistan but I know Benazir ain’t gonna fly. Eric has never pretended to be a “man of the people” but this week’s column is perplexing. I guess the opening paragraphs of Eric’s aristocratic childhood affiliations paint the picture best.
Maybe, like Plato, Eric wishes that the people would be willing to be led by their betters. Maybe that’s why he can’t see Pakistan solving its problems with the current participants. Why else fall back on proven failures from the past?
Maybe Eric is still infatuated with Benazir since he met her way back when, at Oxford I think, when she was a beautiful, tragic figure full of so much promise. I too was smitten by her, back then. But she had her chance.
But back to my opening remark, there’s no chance that Washington would want to see anyone less subservient than Musharraf in Pakistan. It’s either a pipe dream or I’ve missed some underlying sarcasm or double-meaning or something. Jeez, Eric actually said Washington should allow Musharraf to go through a “fair and democratic” process. F#cking American elections aren’t even fair or democratic!
BTW, By “Washington” I mean whoever is in power, Republican or Democrat. American positions on countries like Pakistan don’t waver with the changing of the government. Clinton bombed Iraq almost weekly throughout his to terms. It’s the “American Way” not exclusive to one party or the other.
Or maybe, I don’t know what I’m talking about. Eric is saying that Washington should prevent a destabilization of the area, which is in their interest. But using democracy as a tool of change is like using second-hand smoke as a killer, too unreliable.
DCanuck
Posted by D. Canuck at May 22, 2007 04:31 PM
——But she had her chance.—-
Two chances, actually. And she failed miserably both times.
First woman leader of any Muslims majority country… and what did she do for women? Nothing.
The best thing she did for Pakistan was getting her brother killed. LOL
Posted by The Questioner at May 22, 2007 04:59 PM
Margolis sez —- Pakistan…. could destabilize the entire region and leave US and NATO forces in southern Afghanistan cut off and vulnerable. ——
Translation:
The new Govt. would not care to control fuel supplies to Afghanistan as tightly as Mushi has done. This was one of the original “requests” Dubya had asked of Mushi… to cut off the Taliban’s fuel supply.
It took us a month to put the mechanism in place to do that. Until then, US forces were taking one hell of a beating from the Taliban.
If we let the fuel flow… US and NATO would feel the temperature rise quite a bit overnight.
And second, if we deny them access and logistics.. they’ve had it.
Far from destabilizing the region, the whole place would be much better off with no Amreeka killing innocent civilians and calling them “taliban” and hopefully a nuclear armed Iran to counter more Amreekan nonsense. The fake “war on terror” would be no more.
The region would be stabilized. LOL
Posted by The Questioner at May 22, 2007 05:14 PM
Questioner:
I couldn’t agree more. A nuclear armed Iran, while bad for Washington’s influence in the region, would probably be good for the region’s inhabitants. Of all the states in that area, Iran is, in fact, the most democratic and culturally vibrant (Israel’s a bit better when dealing with those living within their borders, but not so for those whom they occupy). This is not saying much for the region, I suppose, but it is what it is.
Strangely enough, the more we threaten to bomb Iran, the more compelled they are to develop nuclear armaments. It’s an absurd approach to promoting non-proliferation; test nuclear “bunker busters” that we might use on a state we want to prevent from ever acquiring nuclear weapons. That’s richly ironic…
One of the funniest things I have seen recently is an interview Sean Hannity conducted with Ambassador John Bolton. In that interview, I was just amazed that Bolton referred to “regime change” as one of several options available for Iran… regime change… just like that.
As Dane Cook would say, there’s something of a middle ground between “chatting” and “regime change,” where, John Bolton is an idiot. The Empire is falling fast it seems.
Posted by chatman at May 22, 2007 08:53 PM
Mushy talks about due process in the chief justice case. How the heck can he claim anything of the sort? the guy overthrew an elected govt which he had sworn to uphold.
his other responsibility is to guard its citizens. In response to the bombing of that madrassa which killed 80 odd kids, Pakistan’s foreign minister’s comments were that if we hadnt bombed the madrassa, the americans would have.
Thats coming from the Pakistani govt. If these guys cant guard the lives of Pakistanis they should start wearing burkas and let others take over the defense of the country
Mushy must go.
Posted by _RealityBites_ at May 23, 2007 06:09 AM
—- Mushi must go —-
And who is going to make him go? LOL
Posted by The Questioner at May 23, 2007 06:25 AM
The army and the generals are two distinct organisms.
The army is from the people.
Nuff said
Posted by _RealityBites_ at May 23, 2007 09:55 AM
A picture speaks a thousand words:
http://i17.tinypic.com/6c6rnfo.jpg
Maybe 2000 words in this case…
Posted by Rabinovitz at May 24, 2007 12:32 PM
Good article
http://thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=57474
The chief justice had ordered inquiries into these disappearences
He also resisted being led by the nose(Wasnt legalising musharraf’s continued reign)
Posted by _RealityBites_ at May 25, 2007 02:27 AM
Who could have possibly seen this coming?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6697575.stm
Posted by hegadumb at May 28, 2007 09:15 AM
most pakistanis think that zia destroyed the country with his religious agenda. he was also much more faithful to american interests than mush has been.
the army has already learned its lesson from zia’s time. they know that america will use them as necessary and then throw them away when the job is done. accordingly, the army now is milking the war on terror for everything its worth.
i think mush is walking a tightrope. his biggest error was to sack the chief justice, and he is paying for it dearly. but nawaz and BB back in pakistan— god forbid!
Posted by fahdp at May 28, 2007 03:31 PM
Yeah, I often wonder about Eric’s enduring admiration of Zia. The man was in a tough spot strategically, but in order to extricate himself from it, he had to bend over backwards for the Americans. Between ISI and CIA weapons and money, I get the sense that Pakistan was ultimately saved from a potential Soviet advance into Pakistan… I can think of very little that could have stopped a 19,000 piece Soviet armor advance, particularly with a hostile India to the East and an apathetic Iran to the west.
As tough as things were for Zia, if you measure a Pakistani ruler by their willingness to fall into line at Washington’s behest, Zia was among the least respectable of rulers. Of course, the realpolitik tells another story; I get the sense that what Musharraf is doing is no different.
Posted by chatman at May 28, 2007 07:06 PM