Bhutto has been dead only a couple of days, and already the demagogic politicians and would-be presidents are spinning damage control for ex-general and president-for-as-long-as-he-likes Pervez Musharraf. Having invested so bullishly in this coup leader, Bush and company are reluctant to see his fortunes fall alongside the corpse of his chief political rival. In Pakistan as elsewhere, we build today’s disastrous policies on those of yesteryear, compounding tragedy with farce and playing with whole nations as if they were mere instruments of our global ambitions. For decades we’ve supported strongman military leaders in Pakistan because it served our purposes to do so (one-stop political shopping, in effect – less haggling with popular leaders). The rationale in the 1970s and 80s was the fight against the U.S.S.R. in Afghanistan, an effort that amounted to a kind of Ford Foundation for jihadist groups, funded in part by the Saudis and facilitated by the CIA and Pakistan’s I.S.I. intelligence service.

There’s little doubt that elements in Pakistani intelligence and the military are tight with the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Aside from affinities attributable to Pashtun heritage, these are bonds forged over decades of working in tandem with one another. That’s why, in part, sorting who is responsible for a major assassination of this type is bound to be a murky affair. Our own leaders are insisting that this is the work of terrorists, al Qaeda, etc., and that Musharraf and his crew are the forces of light against this profound darkness. But where do the terrorists end and the security forces begin, exactly? We’ve been pouring money into this apparatus for a generation, first in support of Islamic extremists (v. the Soviets) and later in opposition to them (or, at least, some segment of them that does not include extremists like Dostum in Afghanistan). Should we be surprised when the whole thing blows up in our faces?

For our great leaders, the issue doesn’t even arise. We are directed to keep our gaze on the surface – just accept the most simplistic explanation… mindless violence by nihilistic fanatics who hate us for our freedom, our love of democracy, and our chewy goodness. That may work for domestic consumption, since the crime is so heinous, but it seems unlikely that the Pakistani people would accept this explanation. Political assassination is nothing new in Pakistan – Bhutto herself has been accused of employing this tactic in the past. Whatever her shortcomings, she was admired by a substantial number of people, many of whom see Musharraf as the party responsible for her killing. Our government has seen Bhutto only as a means of propping up Musharraf, who counts Cheney among his strongest advocates in the U.S. We are very closely associated with the President/General, and if he is seen as the despoiler of Pakistani’s hopes for a more open society, they may start hating us even more than they do already.

Today the exact circumstances of Bhutto’s death are in dispute – the government has one story and PPP witnesses have another. Sounds like another big foreign policy success on the way. Stay tuned.

luv u,

jp

Here’s an open letter to voters and caucus-goers in New Hampshire and Iowa. (Hey, it’s Christmas – what the hell, right?) More than anybody anywhere in this vast country, your now have the ability to call the major party candidates on just about any topic, whether it’s torture of detainees, the war in Iraq, health care, whatever. What’s more, you have the opportunity to make a greater political impact than that of much larger populations in New York, California, and other major states. How so? Well, for one thing, you can choose from among nearly the entire field of candidates – by the time the race gets to New York, for instance, it will essentially be over. Sure, there may not be a lot of variety there, but it’s better than a ballot of one. And you – particularly those folks in Iowa – can stand in a not-too-crowded living room with one of these fuckers, challenge them with non pre-fabricated questions, and go mano-a-mano politically with ordinarily very isolated and well protected politicians.

Frankly, I’m a bit discouraged by the comments I’ve heard from your fellows in recent weeks. Too many are taken in by the atmospherics of the campaigns. They want you to waste your time thinking about whether or not Hillary Clinton is “likeable” – don’t indulge them. Let them find their own marketing opportunities. And just to make your task a little simple, I’ve come up with some all-purpose questions you can adopt your own. Toss these suckers at any candidate, blue or red, and watch them turn a whole different color.

Q1: In as much as the administration started this war under false pretenses and has plainly indicated that they envision a long-term U.S. military presence in Iraq, are you prepared to pledge that you will a) withdraw all U.S. forces from Iraq, b) abandon any plans for permanent bases in that country, and c) pay reparations for the crime we’ve committed against the Iraqi nation at a level of expenditure that at least approaches the amount it took to destroy that nation?

Q2: Do you intend to put a halt to the current orgy of human rights abuses that our government has embarked upon since 9/11/2001 and to withdraw support from anti-democratic regimes that have invoked our excesses to justify their own with our avid encouragement (both political and financial)?

Q3: Will you become a part of the growing movement to take health care out of the hands of profiteering corporations and start treating it like a public good by aggressively advocating National Health Insurance along the lines of what has worked for decades in Canada, Britain, and other civilized countries?

I got more, but even Christmas has its limits. You can probably do better than this yourselves. Just corner ’em and nail ’em down – it’s up to you, folks.

luv u,

jp

Been watching the amazing caveman race-to-the-bottom that is election 2008, have you? Probably more than you like. In a way, it reminds me of that classic board game, Clue, where there are three groups of cards – suspects, weapons, and locations – and at the start of the game one card from each group is taken out and secreted away; ultimately the winner is the first one to surmise which cards they are. Colonel Mustard did it in the Parlor with the Candlestick Holder, right? Well, particularly on the Republican side, you’ve got maybe three issues that all the major candidates demagogue about, based on G.O.P. polling data – say, immigration, detainee abuse, and the broader “war on terror”. So Rudy, Mitt, Fred, and Huck range about trying to guess what the winning positions will be. (Hmmm…. the Undocumented Mexican Gardener did it in the Anbar Awakening Council with Stress Positions.) They try to outdo each other to the point where it gets pretty ugly. Thus are major national policies born.

Take torture (please). Now I ask you, what is more lame than Romney’s comment that, yes, he’s against torture, but he will not discuss specific techniques because he doesn’t want “the people we capture to know what things we are able to do and what things we are not able to do”? This is essentially the same line Bush has been handing out for a couple of years, and it amazes me still. Does anyone anywhere believe that the people we identify as terrorists have never heard of waterboarding or any of the other methods our interrogators so gleefully employ? There’s nothing new about torture, particularly… just variations on a theme. And enough people have been in and out of U.S. custody over the last few years for word to get around, trust me. (Let alone the fact that many of these detainees come from countries where torture is routinely applied on detainees, such as U.S. ally Saudi Arabia.) Mitt and some of the others on that stage are signaling that the current regime will continue, quite probably get worse on their watch. Their reassurance to the concerned among us? Trust us.

Mitt’s crib on this topic comes from Cofer Black, former C.I.A. official and head of counter terrorism at the Agency (for 3 years, not 30, as Jeremy Scahill has usefully pointed out), now top management at Blackwater International, the mercenary army that has been benefiting very richly from lucrative contracts proffered by the Pentagon, the State Department, Homeland Security, and more. Black is a nasty piece of work – a fact amply reflected by his career choices – and there appears little doubt that he is serving as an important part of Mitt’s virtual brain on national security matters. One can imagine Black playing an important role in a Romney administration, perhaps assuming a major cabinet position. (I can already see him taking softball questions from the Pentagon press corps – maybe they’ll make a sex symbol out of him, as they attempted to do with Rumsfeld early on…… yes, Rumsfeld…). The problem is much bigger than Mitt, though. Every administration sets precedents. Torture has long been a part of our foreign policy (domestic policy too – see Chicago, New Orleans), but Bush has made it a much more open option. If this is seen as tolerated by the majority of Americans, that will be bad in a whole lot of ways.

Stand up, folks – get out of that stress position and tell these idiots that we won’t tolerate torture, no matter how they define it.

luv u,

jp