Chicks Man

Well it was definitely a good idea in theory. But WOW has it ever backfired for President Musharraf. Here is the scenario, there are wacko fundamentalist Islamic “people” who want you dead, and the Western educated Judicial system isn’t crazy about having a President that has direct control of the army; What do you do?

You find someone that people will hate even more than you, and will deflect some of the negative attention away from you. Musharraf’s choice, a former Prime Minister in exile for corruption, incompetence, who happens to be a woman married to a suspected terrorist. What could possibly go wrong?

Turns out everything. While it is thought to be true that the Islamic radicals hate her, even maybe tried to kill her, tune in to the new series CSI Pakistan to find out. That part of the plan kinda maybe worked, but the part where the Judicial system would aim their venom at the return of an incompetent corruption laden person was not.

Instead they started to challenge the “Constitutionality” of Musharraf keeping his control over the government and the military. Leave it to lawyers to bring about the destruction of a country just because of a technicality in their constitution. Men like former Attorney General Antonio Gonzales never let technicalities of law, or justice get in the way of doing his job. Now look how much safer and well protected we are because of it? Who needs civil rights anyway, more people eligible to vote, who instead watch tv and bitch about how nothing ever gets done.

So now President Musharraf has declared marshal law because of all the riots, I mean “protesting” that is going on. So what does his supposed savior/partner/shield from assassination do? She tells her followers to “protest” that there is no need for the emergency marshal law. And by “protest” I mean attack the police, and toss Molotov Cocktails around the block just for good measure.

Now I may be an American, but I thought that kind of thing was reserved for those pointless soccer games the rest of the world plays. I am also confused on how telling your followers to riot will somehow show that the need for marshal law is somehow unnecessary. I guess it flows from the same logic that burning stuff to the ground every time someone says Islam is a violent religion, and there they go again.

It is also funny to me that the person Musharraf brought in to calm things down Bhutto, is doing the exact opposite of what he wanted. I mean, I understand the call of the independent woman, but this is ridiculous. Then I think of all the relationships I have had with the fairer sex, and realize that this is just an extreme case of a woman kinda pissed at the guy who kicked her out.

“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” the saying goes, I just hope this isn’t going to be a true nuclear winter. So good luck Musharraf, and thanks for providing us with another example for guys to drink a beer with their buddies, shake their heads and say, “Chicks man.”

Liberty and Justice For All…Who Deserve It

For the bleeding hear liberal media controlled by the secret society of American Loathers who say,”We speak of spreading democracy, yet appear to be fine with an Ally in Musharraf deposing a Chief Justice and declaring marshal law”. *yawn* So?

We need to understand, as Americans, what the term “Democracy” really means. It is a system of government that is far beyond the mere presence of elections. Even Saddam and Stalin had elections people, they even had approval ratings over 98% Bush would sell whats left of his soul for half those numbers, and I think Cheney would buy it from him. Democracy is a system of government that has at its core several principles that are unique and are though not as visible as elections are the very essence of the American system.

The first is the belief that individuals have merit, while some have more merit than others, each are endowed with a say in the type of government that they will serve. This largely comes from the principle of the Social Contract put forth by Jean Jacques Rousseau. That society as a whole has come to an understanding based upon mutual understandings of Justice, and Values. What democracy does is allow this contract to live and breathe as new generations are able to make their own decisions about justice and the values that define them.

The second principle that is necessary to have a thriving democracy is the understanding of the rule of law. This is to say that there are some things that the law cannot do. It is to be a shield against the oppression of the state, rather than a sword used to enforce it.

The third of these principles would be the extension of the previous principles stated, rights of the minority.  This ideal enforces makes it necessary that the government follow the will of the Majority, but not at the expense of the Minority.  An example here would be Zimbabwe’s land transfer program, where the people voted and the sheer numbers allowed the land, wealth, and even lives of the white citizens of Zimbabwe be taken from them.  There was an “election” that was somehow though to give legitimacy to this action, but one could never say it matches with the ideals of a Democracy.

Another crucial element necessary to have a democracy is having only those who have a stake in the system, partake in the system, at least in its infancy.  This limiting of the franchise prevents those who would do damage to the system from being allowed to do so.  Our example here can be Pakistan.  The tribal areas that border Afghanistan, are supporters of the ideology that spawned the Taliban.   Therefore it is a completely legitimate strategy to prevent them frompartaking in the system they will use simply to legitimize their own views.

This is how our country was able to get through the very harsh incubation period.  Limiting the voting public to male landholders, who would have something to lose if the system did go down in flames.  Even further checks and balances placed on the public by having an electoral college decide the out come of Presidential races.

It is when that Democracy becomes entrenched and the precedents made that the franchise can be extended to those once excluded from the system.  Their are countless examples in which the rising expectations of the populace, exceeded the governments ability to make rapid changes, leading to the collapse of that government.

While it would be nice to prevent the collapse of government and the decent of a population into anarchy, it becomes a critical import when dealing with Pakistan.  Having been aided by the Chinese to develop a nuclear program, as a check on India, the prospect that Pakistan would devolve into chaos is unacceptable.  Having already cited the obvious influence that the ideology of the Taliban has on the borderlands, to allow these people even the chance of obtaining this technology is unacceptable.

What we see in Pakistan now is the clash between the highly educated populace within Pakistan, that have been educated in the West with historical and systematic checks in balances.  Their completely understandable desire to have a government accountable  to the people, must be balanced against the obvious influence that may be gained by the extreme views of Islam.

Should Pakistan fall, it will be the largest and gravest casualty of Bush’s war in the Persian Gulf.  For we will have given the enemy we are supposedly fighting, Islamic Extremists, a path to the very weapons of mass destruction that could be used against us.  With the stakes this high we should be supportive of liberty and justice for all, who deserve it.

No Iran, You Can’t Have Any

 

Though it may not be apparent by the level of readers, nor by the comments, there has been a ground swell of people asking, nay pleading for me to explain United States Foreign Policy. “We are desperate to keep Iran from obtaining nuclear technology, and its not like they are three year olds.” *yawn* Well you would be surprised.

So here exclusively to this post will be the exact policy of the United States, as I see and understand it, concerning Iran. It is my hope that we will be able to smite, I mean convert, er form a coalition of mutual understanding on this issue. Nuclear technology is to be a right of passage that is achieved through scientific understanding, by a government that is either held accountable to its people, or through Party Leadership. It is expensive and research dependent and accidents can happen, example Chernobyl, don’t worry Ivan we can barely see the third ear and second nose. It is because of these inherent dangers that the National Interest decision must be made; Is it easier to deter a power from using nuclear technology once they have it? Or to keep new powers from obtaining the technology to start up their own nuclear program?.

Due to the possibility of “accidental” launches, nuclear accidents, and possibility of proliferation to other groups, the United States has decided to prevent new powers from eating the apple from the tree of Knowledge. (Reference to the Bible, for all you heathens)

To drive this concern even further, is the fact that nuclear weapons, after WWII have become more of a theoretical threat than actual ones. The devastation that the first generation of these weapons have only been expanded upon through the years, thus making them too destructive to be used by any reasonably sound government official. An example of this would be during the Cuban Missile Crisis, when Soviet soldiers had medium ranged weapons pointing at the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, and the very sobering death count which would have resulted, made Kruschev stand down. Mostly because if the U.S. was to get nuked he wanted it to be his decision, not by some illiterate peasant from Siberia. It is somehow refreshing to know that even communists have a disdain for the poor.

What we have with the “country” of Iran, an altogether different situation. The government is contradictory to its own constitution, and that being the least concern of its legitimacy, produces an apathetic voting public which allows a small religious conservative percentage of the population the power to elect a President like Ahmendinajad and hold him to little or no accountability. Not at all like our system of electoral governance. *wink*

This lack of accountability, as well as the vast amounts of rhetoric that Ahmendinajad spouts off about the holocaust and the need to destroy Israel, is not exactly comforting to see them obtain the means to follow through on these threats. The other principle is the United States looking to keep Iran from becoming a hegemonic power in the region. If anyone is going to tell the Middle East how to run their “countries” it will be us.

The difficulty has been that historically, Iran has been one of the dominate powers within the region. There is a reason it is termed the Persian Gulf, after-all rather than the Arabian Gulf. Other factors that make Iran an enigma is the lack of military advantages that are offered to an invading power. The first of these would be its terrain, which is very much able to sustain guerrilla style insurgent forces. The second of which is that it is much larger than Iraq, which would require a much larger pacification force. The third would be the population is much larger than that of Iraq as well.

We must then turn our attention to the personality of that population, for only then can we truly gauge the level of resistance that would exist both pre-and post invasion. While every nation believes it is the greatest, except Canada they are just interested in hockey cause I guess someone has to, the Persian/Iranians have one hell of an almost sound argument. The borders of Iran have loosely been the same since the Bible was written. So since like since the world was created for our friends in Kansas.

Iran has been the big boy on the block, hailed as the cutting edge of culture and technology and having people cater to their will.  It is from this that we see the root of the distrust and rocky relationship that exists between Iran and the United States. One had been the epitome of power and the other now is. The resentment at the loss of this position combined with a fierce desire to reclaim this status.

Having a virtual baby on the International scene telling them they cannot have nuclear weapons, won’t exactly endear them to us. With such bad blood existing between the two countries there is little communication besides the rhetoric expressed by the leadership. If by some very strange circumstances we were no longer to consider the government of Iran an enemy, or even to learn that they have no desire to use the nuclear missiles or to provide these weapons to terrorist groups that they have provided for in the past, perhaps this policy will change. Until then we still have nuclear technology, and no Iran you can’t have any.

Pakistani Politics

Welcome one and all to the inner thoughts of a tormented genius that cannot help but observe and mock the absurdity of what the Human Being is capable of doing to one another. Though one may look to all corners of the globe to find such degradation of human worth, it seems as though the Middle East is often the poster child for such behavior. While the blog-o-sphere is full of either neo-conservative sites striving to destroy the people and their culture, as well as liberal hippies who seem to think if we smoke the proverbial peace pipe all will be fine; I have an altogether different take: The people there need to make smarter decisions.

Case in point is the obscenely stupid, arrogant, and power hungry arrival of Benazir Bhutto. This formerly exiled leader of Pakistan had been kicked out, and kept out, because of mismanagement of government and corruption. Now, in the Middle East this is common place and will be further discussed for my soon to be loyal and devoted readers, but the events of the last couple of days shows how incompetent Bhutto is.

For those who don’t know, Pakistan’s problems stem from them having fundamentalist Muslims who favor the ideals espoused by Al Qaeda and their buddies the Taliban. As such the have very, lets be polite and say quaint views of what the roles of women should be in their society. Here comes the shocker; being the head of the government and telling these “men” what to do isn’t in the list. For those of you faint of heart, please take a moment to recover as I am sure this is a revelation for most of us.

So when news came out that Bhutto would come back and have a power sharing deal with current President Perves Musharraf, these groups were none too happy. They then fell back on what has become the stereotype of what Muslims do when they are angry and launch death threats and blow stuff up. To make matters worse, the level of mistrust and disdain between Musharaf and Bhutto is so high, that even after Musharraf told Bhutto, and I will paraphrase, “People are trying to kill you, give us another week or so before you come back” and yes she ignored this plea and came back anyway.

Of course the outcome was a bombing that killed almost 140 people went off the other day, aimed at trying to kill Bhutto and was unsuccessful. Well does this mean that she believes Musharraf and will work with him to try and stamp out the violent fundamentalists who use Islam as an excuse to do horribly nasty things to people while feeling they are ordained by Allah and thus avoid guilt? No, because that would make sense, instead their are claims that this is Musharraf attempting to get rid of her as well as counterclaims that Bhutto set this assassination attempt up herself in order to garner sympathetic support.

While this may seem a tragic and ridiculous plot line to a bad Steven Segal movie, which is redundant I know, this is what passes for an average political day in the life of a politician in the Middle East. And while we in the West believe that it is a local problem and that there is no need for us to take notice, please consider this, the citizens of Pakistan have decided that these events are not the result of evil men planting bombs, nor a former exiled leader in a rush to build a following to garner more power, nor even a President who is so desperate to keep power he places personal power over national interests, they blame us my friends. For we are the ones who do not seem to care about their plight, leaving people in charge who do not care that the county becomes a cesspool of death and destruction, so long as they can have the title of being in charge of it.