Bushites and Pakistan: Strategic erosion, diplomatic own-goals

The first thing to note is that the (linked) security situations in Pakistan and Afghanistan have been getting significantly worse over the past 18 months. That is bad news– because civil strife is always bad news– first and foremost for the people of the two countries. See, for example, this report of mass arrests in Islamabad.
These situations are also a symptom of the reckless disregard with which the Bushites have viewed every single development in the world since their attention became obsessively focused on Iraq, in 2005-2006.
They are also, like the ongoing deterioration in Palestine, a symptom of the fact that the other big and emerging powers in the world either do not want to step in and stop the US from playing the blocking/disruptive role it has been playing, or they are unable to.
US strategic power everywhere in the world is eroding rapidly. The causes of this erosion are real and deepseated enough. But it is certainly only being accelerated by the Keystone Cops-ish ineptitude of the way US “diplomacy” is being handled.
Friday night, Condi Rice called Pakistani Pres. Musharraf and “warned” him against declaring martial law. The people in the State Dept. also apparently told the press Rice had done so. Musharraf , who has received more than $10 billion in US aid since 2001, swept the warning away like a minor irritant.
So who’s giving Condi and Bush advice on how to handle Washington’s diplomacy? It looks amateurish and desperate.
However, I don’t want to mock the Bushites too much. I’m a bit afraid that if they feel themselves to be in too much of a corner internationally they might take some rash and drastic action…
Meanwhile, Manan Ahmed over at Informed Comment Global Affairs gives an English-language rendering of the entire transcript of Musharraf’s epoch-making t.v. announcement– both the Urdu and the English portions of it.

3 thoughts on “Bushites and Pakistan: Strategic erosion, diplomatic own-goals”

  1. It took quite a long time for the main US media (TV) to wake up to the Pakistan story, long after the BBC news, for instance. Were they waiting to be told what the line is? This time delay has seemed more and more obvious over the past two years. And while one waits, the US population is fed really low class tabloid stuff, and tons of “sports”. Then, when they do comment, they all repeat the same lines, and the same pix, and the same ignorant comments. When it was finally stated on one news (national) net that the Supreme Court judges has been sent home “with a military escort” it has still not been said ( if it was I missed it) on any news program that they were ARRESTED, after they had hastily convened the Court and issued an Order of the Supreme Court that renders all subsequent actions of the civil regime unlawful acts ( see Newspaper DAWN for Nov.3); that all the judges of that court refused to be sworn to the new regime, except perhaps one, and that the news of the day after the midnight military actions was the listing of which judges in what jurisdictions had refused to be sworn. Imagine , this is what the people there want to know! A large majority of the judges across the country would not be sworn, and this has been followed by the mass arrests of lawyers, civil rights leaders, and prominent political figures.
    The news readers and their ilk know very well what has happened, as I heard one interview a diplomat this evening, and when the man stated that judges of the court had been taken away by the military, she immediately interjected “…well that was because they would not take the oath.” If that is a peep at the present culture of the media you are in very serious trouble down there.
    I think these acts of personal courage and integrity speak volumes about who seeks to uphold law and order in Pakistan. The US government, I fear, does not compare very favorably, with the last year of corrupt and cowardly figures in the executive parading out of Washington in disgrace.
    If you have a ruling class, and you surely do, it is not very competent, and does not presently seem to be ready to control the petty ideologues of the Federal administration. Is it going to be written that the American empire ended with a whimper.

  2. It really is quite an achievement to have parlayed a war against Pashtun nationalists and religious traditionalists into a position of almost total isolation in Pakistan’s incredibly diverse society. But they’ve done it: well done!! The “secularists” and the “modernisers” the lawyers and the professionals are now being forced to unite with the armed rebels in the tribal districts.
    And, so, I’m informed, are important sections of the military. The Bhutto deal seems to have come unstuck (political suicide not being one of her immediate plans) and the only viable alternative is back in Arabia counting his blessings, one imagines.
    So who does support Musharaff? Mr Bush and Mr Cheney. Good luck!!

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