Illusions of Change

Illusions of change

Humayun Gauhar

The world is moving so fast that often a writer is at a loss for what to write about. All sorts of things happened last week � the sentencing to death of one mass murderer by another; the killing of 42 Pakistani army recruits apparently in retaliation to the killing of 80 Taliban or Talibs in Bajaur; the outstanding World Islamic Economic Conference held in Islamabad; and the cold-blooded murder of 18 Palestinian children, women and men in Gaza. But what grabbed the world�s attention most was the Republican loss of Congress and probably a first ever lady speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi. President Bush took what has to be the fastest U-turn in history: after saying just a day earlier that Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was going nowhere, he had to sack him on the day elections results came in.

With defeat etched on his face, the cowboy in Bush made a gaff while trying to make the best of it, saying that �this isn�t my first rodeo� forgetting that this time he is riding a bucking mare named Nancy Pelosi. Having tried to avoid daddy�s shadow by appointing his own men, Bush Jr replaced Rumsfeld with daddy�s CIA director Dr Robert Gates. Former secretary of state James Baker is already on board. But it is too little too late, because the election is already lost and hundreds of thousands of Afghans, Iraqis, Americans and Europeans are already dead. What Bush needs is not only a change in personnel or even a change in policy but a total new strategy on how to exit as honourably as possible from Iraq and Afghanistan. The presidential campaign starts when the mid-term elections end, so to give the Republicans a chance he should also get rid of the ailing and mentally unhealthy Cheney with a younger and mentally less unhealthy vice president. The Democrats are unlikely to field an outright winner and may not be able to nominate anyone but Hillary Clinton. The question is: has America evolved enough to accept a woman president, like we Asians have � or a black one for that matter? Given the acute paucity of good candidates and given that most of the Congressional election margins were small, a Republican candidate with a two-year vice presidential stint under his belt might just be able to bring home the bacon.Little Bush is an aberration, less a representative sample of the Republicans and more an attack dog for the neocons, theocons and big business � arms, construction, oil and engineering. His father, a red-hot Republican, had the sense to adopt a limited objective in his Iraq war � ending Saddam�s occupation of Kuwait. Little Bush seemingly started off with a limited objective too, of regime change, in which the majority of the Iraqi people were with him, for they hated Saddam�s tyranny. Instead, after toppling Saddam, Bush decided to remain there and become another tyrant of the most primitive military coloniser kind and ended up being hated by the Iraqi people even more than Saddam. What a nut. At the risk of being a party pooper, let me suggest that when the rejoicing is over and good sense returns to its throne (it rarely does lately) we should remember the Democrat�s track record. They have always been more partial towards India than Pakistan. Frankly, as far was we Pakistanis and Muslims are concerned, and even the rest of the poor countries, there�s little to choose between Republicans and Democrats. The Democrats started the horrific Vietnam War, which also levelled Cambodia and Laos. It was Republican president Ronald Reagan who ignored our nuclear programme while we were waging the Afghan Jihad for America, but his Republican successor Big Bush refused to certify it after the Jihad was won, killed the architects of the victory, Generals Zia and Akhtar Abdur Rahman, and imposed shocking sanctions on us. Democratic president Clinton brought in sanctions again when conducted our nuclear test in May 1998, forgetting that the cause was India. Came 9/11 (questions are still being asked about who really did it) and Little Bush forced us into the �war on terror� � you are either with us or with the terrorists, and if you are with the terrorists then be prepared to be bombed back to the Stone Age. Sanctions were lifted, the debt vice round our national throat was loosened somewhat, but in the middle of it all Little Bush went and signed a civilian nuclear deal with India. Both parties are bad for us but history shows that the Democrats are worse. I wonder what today�s party goers will be feeling like in six months.

Take Nancy Pelosi. Speaking to AIPAC, madam had this to say: �There are those who contend that the Israeli-Palestinian dispute is all about Israel�s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. This is absolute nonsense. In truth, the history of the conflict is not over occupation, and never has been: it is over the fundamental right of Israel to exist.� Now grab this: �The greatest threat to Israel�s right to exist, with the prospect of devastating violence, now comes from Iran. For too long, leaders of both political parties in the United States have not done nearly enough to confront the Russians and the Chinese, who have supplied Iran as it has plowed ahead with its nuclear and missile technology.�

While the US badly needs exit strategies from Afghanistan and Iraq, we too badly need an exit strategy from America�s lost �war on terror�. You cannot successfully fight a war against terrorism when you are the biggest terrorist of them all and the prime cause of non-state terrorism � which the US is. You only end up making the world a more dangerous place � which the US has. Now that America�s wars are lost and the danger of US retaliation could well be steadily decreasing, Muslim states need to grasp the opportunity to detach themselves from a lost cause, distance themselves from US foreign policy and become truly non-aligned. I�m not saying that we should attack the US or break diplomatic relations with it � far from it. I�m saying that we need no longer be identified with its lost causes and inhuman policies, its quagmires and the mental rut that �what is good for America is good for the world, so the world had better re-fashion itself to be good for America even at great loss to itself � or else�. America remains the most powerful country in history, militarily and economically, with a knowledge bank centuries ahead of the rest of us and growing by the minute. Taking it on is suicidal: those who did are in the Stone Age, and even though America lost the wars, its opponents didn�t win them: they are still in the Stone Age without a hope in hell. Just imagine: if the Taliban regain power in Afghanistan, what chance is there for the perennially backward Afghans? But then they have brought it upon themselves. We need a strategy where the Afghans can have their beloved Taliban back and the Taliban can have their beloved government back, as long as they agree not to try and impose their dehumanised version of a most humane religion on their neighbours. We will leave them alone if they leave us alone.