On Bhutto's Death: A Cautionary Christmas Tale -- Don't Give Your Teenager a Gun
Once upon a time, many, many Christmases ago, a crowd of Pakistani generals sat on the knee of Uncle Sam, aka Santa, and asked him to load up the sleigh with guns and drop them in Islamabad.
"Ho, Ho, Ho," replied Santa. "Have you been good little generals?"
"No we haven't," they replied.
"That's okay. If you promise that you will be good and that you'll help kick the Soviet Grinch out of Afghanistan, you'll wake up in the morning and find all the guns you want under the tree."
"Goody," the generals said.
"One last thing," said Sam/Santa. "When you are finished beating up the Soviets you have to clean up your room, be nice to the tribesmen and put all the guns away like good little generals. Okay?"
"Sure Santa," they said.
This morning the word reached the White House, Benazir Bhutto was killed. She had been identified by the White House as the best hope for Democracy in the country. The killing was as predictable as bloodshed at a frat house party decorated with automatic weapons and kegs of beer.
Pakistan is a "nation" created by the perverse whims of British cartographers at the end of English rule in the subcontinent. The biggest piece of the pie was India, a Hindu state. The other pieces were Islamic concentrations first called East and West Pakistan (now Bangladesh and Pakistan). The fact that the new boundaries not only created phony countries, they also disenfranchised millions upon millions of people.
While the biggest problems were identified as Hindu vs. Muslim, there were also the tribal problems in parts of northern Pakistan where people didn't buy into the new British designation. Those tribes bow to Islamabad when convenient (or forced) and ignore it when they like. The only stability since then has been provided by military government. The British map did not create a country it merely forced a number of non-cooperative ingredients into the same pot.
As the British Empire died the American one was born. The difference we relied on bribery (aka "foreign aid") and influence (aka "trade concessions") rather than control enforce our wishes. Sometimes in this less than perfect world people aren't always going to behave the way we'd like.
The Pakistan problem started in the 1980s. The US was happy to have a balance against nuclear India and, later, even happier to have a staging ground to oust the Soviets from neighboring Afghanistan, a pivotal event which led to the collapse of the Berlin Wall.
The deal with the devil was that we had cast our lot with military hardliners and doubled our bet by increasing their access to arms.
When domestic turmoil started to spiral out of control earlier this decade, we politely asked the generals to do "something." We gave them a laundry list of suggestions from free elections to increased civil rights. We didn't come up with any solution that would make the country governable without constant and massive force.
Bhutto and her friends in Washington saw an opportunity for her to return from exile as a symbol of democracy, a Muslim Corazon Aquino. The idea was that she would help the transition from military rule to civilian. Among the problems was that she was no great Democrat--she had fled the country in the face of credible corruption charges. The other is that she had no traction against the Islamic fundamentalists in the tribal region.
Her death was as predictable as a car wreck on an icy road. The country has been skidding downhill since the day in November when she returned and barely escaped an assassination attempt.
So where does that leave us?
Right back where we started. Musharraf and the other generals (who might well get rid of him to give the whole affair a guise of change) will tell Washington that there are two options: military rule or Islamic fundamentalists taking hold of the Pakistani nuclear arsenal.
We will encourage them to behave themselves. But once you give a kid a weapon with ammunition you surrender your authority to tell him what to do.
Read more reactions from HuffPost bloggers on Benazir Bhutto's assassination
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Happily, Mr. Mulvaney's piece touches upon what seems to be anathema to right-wing ideologues -- the why and how. Not in the sense of "Why do they hate freedom?", but how we contributed to the chaos. I can't avoid (too glibly perhaps) Santayana's observation that "He who does not remember history is doomed to repeat it."
Pakistan is not the only nation created by the "whims" of British cartographers -- Israel and Iraq both share the courtesy. In every instance, displacement created fanaticism. And in each case, with our arms and trade policies, we've tried to fight fire with gasoline (sometimes for the sake of gasoline). It's no wonder we're feeling the heat.
Bhutto's death, whatever her shortcomings, is a blow to constructive change in a country we've tried to buy but have not yet paid for.
Not that it takes anything away from the post, but "The biggest piece of the pie was India, a Hindu state" is not accurate. India is not a Hindu state. India is a secular democracy.
Oh! And I watched Chralie Wilson's War just yesterday. Good movie. And it covers part of the history that you have covered dealing with Pakistan and the support for Mujahedin in Afghanistan.
I hear that the book is even better.
Let's all just have a nice cuppa and look forward to those forthcoming Indian mangoes we'll be enjoying as our 'payment' for more nuc-uu-lar technology going into the region. With triggers.
I mean, after all, we're the good guys, right? When we give that stuff, whether guns, bombs or long blades away, we're trusting those we arm will continue to the end of time, using it wisely.
Just bringing democracy to the world whether those we bless with our largesse want it, are ready for it, can manage or sustain it...or not.
The analogies of the first couple of paragraphs ("sure, Santa") are spot on.
The best single post I've read so far on this latest disaster in the long, long list of unintended consequences of the worst fuck-up in American foreign policy history, by the most catastrophically incompetent and unprepared President to ever hold the office.
The place where you lose coherence is that the biggest "problem" in Pakistan is the existence of a nuclear arsenal, and we did not actually give that to them.
Pakistan built its own "bomb" which sort of indicates that there must have been some kind of a country there after the British left. They sure didn't cobble that together in spite of having myriad social forces pulling in disparate directions. And we need to give credit where credit is due by reminding ourselves that that country has gone through a number of episodes of military engagement without resorting to "the big one". The lesson being, of course, that everyone wants to join the nuclear club, while acknowledging that none of those foul instruments of destruction can ever be deployed in anger.
Not by a state actor, at least. For terrorists, though, one assumes that no mayhem is too heinous to contemplate. And no amount of liability would be too great to heap upon the head of a party culpable of even facilitating a transfer of such a device to any maniac crazy enough to detonate it.
Given the nature of the Pakistani military, the odds are great that they will hold as tightly to the composition of their nuclear arsenal as any other government possessing one. And from all indications, they certainly have the motivation and the wherewithal to dictate pretty much any outcome in that country that they wish.
I picture it as being like the Red Mosque. When the military has had enough, that will be the end of the problem. I'm not going to claim to know what their answer is, but I sure wouldn't bet against there being one. Nor would I bet that their way is any worse than what we might try to influence them into doing, and letting them go would sure be much cheaper.
Finally, while none of this happens to look anything like Democracy, it also doesn't look very different from the Pakistan of the last fifty years and both we and they have muddled through.
Just another example f the US sleeping with dogs except these fleas can kill you! I no longer hold out any hope that the leadership of this country will ever learn. It would require that US citizens took more time to learn about what their government is doing in their name. It would require a free and independent press, not a corporate owned one. It would require that they spend as muc time educating themselves as they do watching 24 and Desperate Housewives. They'd have to use their computers to search out information rather than download porn and play games. And how likely is that to happen? Not bloody....
How did you arrive at "Don't give your teenager a gun"? That should be "Don't give an irresponsible person (of an age) a gun." There's nothing wrong with responsible teenagers owning guns.
When you say "a Muslim Corazon Aquino" you mean Benigno Aquino.
Regarding the tribal areas: The Brits grabbed a piece of Afghanistan a century and a half ago. They spent a lot of British blood getting not much, and they jealously held on to the little they got. When Pakistan became independent, they got the tribal areas, because the Brits were too arrogant to give it back to Afghanistan. If they had given it back, then the US troops in Afghanistan would be allowed into that area.
Very good, intelligently written post. Thank you. Biden'08.
Great post. Thanks.
It doesn't help that we'd been propping up Mushy as the local Mr. GWOT, despite his playing host to OBL.
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