C is for Condi, D is for Democracy
If C is for Condi and D is for Democracy, C is also for Chevron – the US oil company that has named one of its oil supertankers after Condoleezza Rice – and D is also for Destruction – of the kind that the Bush administration has unleashed on Afghanistan and Iraq.
The Bush administration’s original name for its invasion of Iraq was “Operation Iraqi Liberation”. But when White House officials realised that the acronym for the name spelt “OIL”, they hurriedly changed it to “Operation Iraqi Freedom”.
Not for nothing, however, is US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice known as the “Warrior Princess”. She was in her element this week, first telling journalists in Islamabad that she expects President Pervez Musharraf to fulfill his promise to hold free and fair elections next year, and then telling a press conference in Kabul on Wednesday that Washington would not allow Afghanistan’s “ruthless Taliban enemies” to succeed.
Rice said, “Afghanistan has determined enemies. They are ruthless, but they will not succeed…They are simply not going to win…We will not allow it to happen…We are not going to tire, we are not going g to leave. They should know that we are in this fight until it is victoriously concluded.”
Rice seems to have forgotten that this was also what the US said about its military intervention in Vietnam. For all its tough talk, however, the US had to make an ignominious exit from Vietnam, with Saigon falling to the Viet Cong even as the last US helicopter took off from the roof of the American embassy.
Rice also seems to have forgotten that when the Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan, Moscow said its troops were not going to leave until the Mujahideen were vanquished.
Soviet troops were in Afghanistan for ten long years. They killed more than a million Afghans and destroyed most of the country’s infrastructure. All the killing and destruction availed them nothing in the end, and the Soviet-installed puppet Najibullah regime fell within two years of their departure.
Just how long does Washington intend its forces to stay in Afghanistan? Rice said the US is “in this fight until it is victoriously concluded”. But exactly how does Washington plan to determine when “victory” has been achieved? In the same way that President Bush concluded back in May 2003 that the “mission” in Iraq had been “accomplished”?
But Rice’s gung-ho rhetoric was totally over the top when she described embattled Afghan President Hamid Karzai as one of the world’s “most respected leaders.”
Karzai is a former employee of the US oil company Unocal, which, back in the mid-1990s, wanted to build a gas pipeline from Central Asia through Afghanistan to Pakistan.
As for Rice’s remarks about Musharraf’s promise to hold free and fair elections in Pakistan next year, Foreign Office spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam told journalists in Islamabad on Wednesday. “On the democratic processes in Pakistan, we do not require advice from outside as these matters essentially concern the people of Pakistan.”
The British politician Lord Hailsham once remarked, “The moment politics becomes dull democracy is in danger.” Willie Whitelaw, the Tory leader in the House of Lords in the days of the Thatcher government, would have agreed with this formulation. He once accused the British Labour Party of “going around stirring up apathy”!
That’s also what many Pakistani politicians seem to spend much of their time doing: going around stirring up apathy – on the theory that the more apathy you stir up the more column inches your statements are likely to occupy in the press.
Then, of course, there was the late British novelist Kingsley Amis, who began his literary career in the 1950s as an angry young man and ended it some forty years later as an angry old misogynist. He said, “Politics is a thing that only the unsophisticated can really go for.”
Is this true? Well, yes, to the extent that the sophisticated tend not to be passionate about anything, and without passion there can’t really be any politics – at least, not in the classical sense.
The sophisticated also tend to see both sides of every question, a la: on the one hand, there is this, but then, on the other hand, there is that. This, again, is not fertile ground for politics, which requires that one be partisan, even blatantly partisan.
The story goes that a Palestinian negotiator once went to London for talks with the British Foreign Office. After a few days of discussions, however, he said he refused to talk any further until the British produced a one-armed negotiator.
“Why a one-armed negotiator?” asked the puzzled British officials.
“Because,” replied the Palestinian, “I’ve got fed up sitting here day after day listening to your officials saying, ‘On the one hand…but on the other hand…’”
Jerry Brown, a former governor of California, was once asked why he had entered the 1976 US presidential race. He replied, “Because I couldn’t think of a good reason not to. A little vagueness goes a long way in this business.”
Back in 1978, Jerry Brown said one other thing: “People will tear each other apart if given half a chance. Politics is a jungle and it’s getting worse. People want a dictator these days, a man on a white horse. They’re looking for a man on a white horse to ride in and tell them what to do. A politician can do anything as long as he manipulates the right symbols.”
In 1967, the American author Norman Mailer published a book called “Why Are We in Vietnam?” The title was an obvious attempt to cash in on the Vietnam War, which was at its height in those days. In fact, the book has nothing to do with Vietnam or the war. It’s actually about a bear hunt in Alaska.
US Vice-President Dick Cheney, too, is fond of hunting. Perhaps, one day we’ll see him writing a book called “Why Are We in Iraq?” The foreword to the book could be written by Condi Rice. She could begin by saying, “We are in Iraq for the duration. We are not going to tire. We are not going to leave. We are in this fight until it is victoriously concluded, or until the last Iraqi – whichever comes first.”
Murphy’s Law is now old hat. Now, we have Schnatterly’s Summing Up of the Corollaries, which says: Even if anything can’t go wrong, it will.
Schnatterly’s observation is particularly relevant in the context of Pakistani politics. Who in Pakistan could have thought on October 1, 1999 what would happen to Nawaz Sharif’s government only two weeks later?
It is another matter that Sharif had become so unpopular by then due to his bad governance and the victimisation of his political opponents that his government’s ouster was greeted with jubilation across the country.