Three Events that changed the World
Three things happened on Thursday that changed the world.
The victorious Pakistan People's Party, now the largest in the Pakistani lower house of parliament, has reached a deal for a coalition with two other parties. One is the Muslim League-N, loyal to former PM Nawaz Sharif, which has a quarter of seats in the federal legislature. The other is the Awami National Party, a Pushtun (Pathan) secular nationalist party. The coalition is explicitly an alliance against Pervez Musharraf, the longtime military dictator of the country, who is backed by Bush and Cheney. It is hard to see how this coalition will cohabit with Musharraf, now the civilian president.
Meanwhile the White House and the State Department appear to be confusing the Pakistani public by taking opposite stances on what needs to be done.
Nawaz Sharif, a junior partner in the emergent coalition, again called Thursday for Pervez Musharraf to step down. I think it will be hard for Sharif to let go of that aspiration. The danger is that it may bring the army in.
Second, angry Serbs attacked the US embassy in Belgrade.
Note that Neoconservative pundits kept telling us that there was something deeply wrong with Muslims for protesting when they were kicked or expelled, saying that look, the Serbs have been harmed by US policies but they don't go around attacking US embassies. I guess they'll have to find a new argument.
And given that the Serbs are Eastern Orthodox Christians, will the Republican Party and Fox Cable News now start fulminating against "Christofascism?"
Third, Clinton " only managed only a draw" in the debate with Obama She needed to fluster him into saying something that he should not. She failed. He looked strong, confident and presidential. It seems unlikely now that she can overcome his lead in pledged delegates.
It is a whole new world, but there are great dangers lurking out there--for the Balkans, for South Asia. And, the stability of Iraq is extremely shaky (see below).
posted by Juan Cole @ 2/22/2008 12:40:00 AM
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8 Comments:
I can't see how the White House or State can confuse the people of Pakistan about what should be done. The post-2003 reality is that the rest of the world does not care much about what the US wants or thinks.
It is stunning that America is so vocal and clear about their rejecting the will of the Pakistani people. The White House proudly announced that Bush called Musharraf after the election and assured Musharraf of total support.
Who decides leadership issues in Pakistan, the Pakistani people or a foreign power? What happened to Bush's mantra of "spreading democracy?" Well, no one really believed Bush anyway. American intervention is so damn suffocating.
It seems the Kosovo conflict in particular is one Americans simply do not understand because the complexities of the region's long-standing ethnic conflicts have never been explained by the media. I recently read Diana Johnstone's article NATO's Kosovo Colony which really was very enlightening.
As for Obama, given the great dangers lurking out there, it would be great if we had a candidate with real knowledge of the world and a real vision for US foreign policy (a sane one, McCain has a vision but it's a nightmare).
Other big pieces of world-changing news: Oil closed at over $100 per barrel with no hint of slowing down. Remember, it was in the $20's when GWB took office. Cui bono?
Turkey invaded Iraq. The unintended consequences we've been fighting a rear-guard action to contain are bubbling closer and close to the surface.
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41308
If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it...
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And when U.S. forces speak of a reduction in violence, many Iraqis simply do not know what they are talking about.
Hundreds died in a series of explosions in Baghdad last month. This was despite the strongest ever security measures taken by the U.S. military, riding the "surge" in security forces and their activities.
The death toll is high, according to the website icasualties.org, which provides reliable numbers of Iraqi civilian and security deaths.
In January this year 485 civilians were killed, according to the website. It says the number is based on news reports, and that "actual totals for Iraqi deaths are higher than the numbers recorded on this site."
The average month in 2005, before the "surge" was launched, saw 568 civilian deaths. In January 2006, the month before the "surge" began, 590 civilians died.
...
Unidentified bodies of Iraqis killed by militias continue to appear in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities. The Iraqi government has issued instructions to all security and health offices not to give out the body count to the media. Dozens of bodies are found every day across Baghdad, residents say. Morgue officials confirm this.
"We are not authorised to issue any numbers, but I can tell you that we are still receiving human bodies every day; the men have no identity on them," a doctor at the Baghdad morgue told IPS. "The bodies that have signs of torture are the Sunnis killed by Shia militias; those with a bullet in the head are usually policemen, translators or contractors who worked for the Americans."
...where peace of sorts has descended in Baghdad, Iraq's capital city of six million (in a population of 25 million), it comes from a partitioning of people along sectarian lines. The Iraqi Red Crescent reports that one in four residents has been driven out of their homes by death squads, or by the "surge". "
If a surge is a disaster, but makes for great propaganda, is it a success?
I think the new Pakistani government should pressure Musharraf to release the small, furry animal he keeps captive on top of his head.
Brittany Spears is out of rehab.
The Hilton son got arrested for dui.
Barack Obama is a black man.
There was a bus accident in Minnesota.
Oh yeah, only a couple of Iraqis got killed proof the surge is working.
The news media has been spewing out crap like that for the last few years. While Iraq burns and our young men and women kill and are killed we are bombarded with corporate approved information. The rest of the world sees the dead children and crying families, they see the blood running past the ruins of one of the worlds oldest civilizations.
Here in America the true reporters like Ted Koppel, Dan Rather and there ilk were removed for daring to shine a bit of light on what was being done in our name.
I visit tons of sites such as this one and I fear it's only a matter of time before the internet is usurped and there will be no outlet for the truth.
Using Bush-Math, where 2 + 2 = 5, let's step back a bit. First, why does Bush retain Condi, who is almost always at odds with the rest of his administration? Fine, to say that she is the smiley-face on the beast, and is out there promoting democratic reform, negotiation, and at least outwardly, a more reasonable approach to matters of state, while the rest of this bunch are out playing ruthless Realpolitik -- as long as that role does not harm the real agenda.
So, in Pakistan, Condi's influence played probably no small part in Bhutto's return last year. Without her return, elections may not have happened at all. And if they had, the coalescing power her assassination fostered among non-Musharraf factions, and the furor over Musharraf generally, would not have materialized, and most importantly, this would all be off the front page of western media.
How do you reconcile U.S. promotion of forces designed to ouster Musharraf via Rice, and support for Musharraf via Bush/Cheney, et al.? Surely Bush knew Bhutto's return, if nothing else, was a thorn in Musharraf's side, and counter to the rest of the administration's pronouncements.
I think this is all by design. Musharraf has shown too much independence from Washington. He must go. There was no way to make this happen until the elections, which Washington knew would turn out like this, if they kept their hands off them.
Now the pressure is there for him to stand down. If he plays the dictator card, public furor will eventually bring him down through "take to the streets" opposition, which without U.S. support (though they will continue to give it lip-service), he won't be able to stand against. If he steps down, the governing coalition will splinter, as their raison d'être will have been removed.
I don't doubt Washington has a new Musharraf in the wings, and will fill this void as events unfold. End result, at best a nominal democratically elected government, with no real power. At worst, devolution into another military dictatorship, temporary of course, and only due to a state of emergency...
The U.S. will have the freedom they want, to do whatever it is they feel constrained to do currently, and the western media will move on to the next thing, and 2 + 2 will again equal 5.
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