Friday, December 17, 2010

Obama's War Reviews

The most recent review of the Afghan War by the Obama Administration will not make up for a lack of policy, which could guide this war to a successful conclusion.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

The Politics of War

There needs to be a debate in Pakistan questioning the proper balance between the military and the civilian leadership and what should be the role of a civilian-military relationship during a war. There is a discussion underway questioning Pakistan’s role in the war against terrorism, but it does not seem to be asking the questions that need to be answered about the nature of this war. Far more important than ‘what are we fighting for?’ is to ask how to fight and win this war. There seems to be no clue, reason or an idea how the state of Pakistan will triumph over the challenges confronting it. The state of Pakistan appears to be adrift and rudderless and keeps oscillating between indecision and denial, as it appears to be incapable of understanding the existential questions facing it.

This war is being fought for the soul of Pakistan and it is being fought to decide what the final vision of Pakistan will be and how it will ultimately exist as a nation state. To understand the basic premise of this war, which is the attainment and exercise of political power within Pakistan, it must be remembered that the origins of all wars reside in the political reasons for which they are being fought. A war is basically an application of armed violence intended to achieve a political goal and it is the political reasons of a war that then influence the military strategy behind a particular war. Wars are the final arguments in politics and the objective of a war is to convince an adversary to stop resisting the political demands that are being forced upon it. Wars occur when diplomacy, which is the traditional avenue of a political discourse, proves incapable of resolving political issues. Therefore, wars have to be understood as endeavours of a political will designed to revive the diplomatic negotiations from a favourable position and this is the guiding principle behind all wars.

In this sense, the idea of a military victory is only, and must be limited to, how successfully a war can end the diplomatic impasse and revive the political process. Therefore, wars must be fought for clearly defined political reasons and those political reasons then determine the conditions under which the fighting will cease and peace will be restored. Once these reasons are articulated, the military strategy is framed in the context of identifying those points of military value that need to be attacked and defeated in order to end the war as quickly as possible. The rationale of a military strategy must always be in the aid of a political purpose and never in isolation from it. It is this overarching reason that makes for an imperative argument for civilian control of the Pakistani military and why military strategy in Pakistan must always be subservient to the ‘political necessity’. Wars that are fought without political considerations and as entities within their own right and are open-ended in their execution, become self-defeating propositions. Military strategy must be as flexible as the political realities under which it is implemented, and if the political reality changes in the middle of a war, the military strategy must also change and accept the new political realities.

The traditional problem in Pakistan has always been that its military strategy has been crafted in complete disregard of the political reasons and even worse, the idea of a ‘military necessity’ has been periodically imposed on politics. This is the reason that will prove to be the biggest obstacle in Pakistan’s attempts to defeat the Taliban and their al Qaeda patrons and its various militant sectarian supporters. The Pakistani military does not have the capacity to defeat the Taliban and their supporters. The Taliban and their followers, on the other hand, do not have the ability to take over the state of Pakistan. So unless there is a political policy behind this war that can end it, this war will be without an end if fought from a purely military perspective. The only problem, and a very crucial one, is that civilian control of the Pakistani military and its military strategy raises the question about the role of the Pakistani politicians as military strategists and whether they understand the limitations of military power in resolving political problems.

The Pakistani political leadership, if it is to assume the responsibility for this war, needs to take the direction of this war away from the military. The reason the military is dominating the politics of this war is because the civilian leadership of the country has distanced itself from this war and has left the conduct of this war to the generals. This is an unacceptable abdication of political responsibility, because all military plans and strategy have a political consequence to them and if left unattended, they can severely affect a nation’s ability to function as a sovereign power as the military, in pursuit of victory, can commit the nation to new and unwanted policies. Furthermore, a civilian military strategist must understand that the role of the military in this war and its counter-insurgency operations will not defeat the threat, but can only open the negotiating space available to the government to engage the Pakistani Taliban from a more advantageous position.

The manner in which that opportunity is exploited and the political promises extracted and committed, is dependent on upon the dexterity of the civilian leadership and how effectively it occupies the political vacuum created as a result of military operations in weakening the Pakistani Taliban and their resistance to the political demands being imposed on them. In other words, are the Pakistani politicians able to secure political peace following the military operations? The bitter reality of this war is that both the Pakistani military and its civilian leadership are not qualified to seek a lasting end to this war as neither of them really understands their proper role in this war and how to fight it to a successful conclusion. Civilian-military relations in Pakistan have been so distorted by the repeated forays of the military into the civilian realm that in order to effectively wage this war, the correct equilibrium between the military and civilian leadership will have to be created before an effective military strategy emerges in this war.

The challenge facing the state of Pakistan, and for it to emerge successful in this war, is not to defeat the insurgency per se but to create the proper mechanism of a civilian-military response to the threat while fighting a war and reversing the mistakes of the past. In the end, when the fighting finishes, this war will end in a political settlement and the state of Pakistan will be better served if its military rejects its policies of military-political schizophrenia and fights to give the politicians the options that will secure the long-term interests of Pakistan. It is the function of the Pakistani military to ensure that the final peace will benefit the interests of Pakistan as a country and not just the institutional interests of the Pakistani military. The best means of securing this reality is for the politicians in Pakistan to assume the command and direction of this war before it is too late and Pakistan actually ends up losing this war.

The above also appeared in The Daily Times (http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2010\12\15\story_15-12-2010_pg3_4) of December 15, 2010

Thursday, November 25, 2010

Kantian Logic

In 1784, the German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, defined the Age of Enlightenment as a time of "man leaving his self-caused immaturity".

We are still caught up in our self-caused immaturities

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Jericho

Is this Jericho?

Who will guard these walls?
And who will guard the silver thorned rose?
Who will free my memories?
And who will protect my dreams?

Will the touch heal or impale?
Who will watch over the ramparts?
Why does the world cry crocodile tears
When it has no eyes to see the pain?

My memory sails upon the seas of regret,
I wonder in the silence of the night
Is there a sheltered harbor from the storms?

Will I make it to the shore?
Will you give me shelter from the winds of chance?
Will you guide me to the nearest Port of Hope?

Will you stay long enough to say "goodbye" to me?
Will you hunger for me, as I thirst for you?
Will you comfort me when the walls fall?
Will you turn me to the sounds of the trumpet
And my eyes away from the ruins?

Will you remember
I will remember you
When you have forgotten me?

Will you smile and hide my pain?
Will you cry with me
And rejoice in my rejoicing?

Will you remember my voice in the echos of time?
Will you count the grains of memory with me?

Is this Jericho?

Monday, November 22, 2010

Knowledge's Sorrow

Knowledge increases awareness and with increased awareness comes increased sorrow.

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Darwinian Politics

There is a certain evolutionary process to politics and this process includes those movements, which originate in the form of an armed insurgency or a militancy designed to affect a political rationale or a reason. The reasons behind such movements, though important in of themselves, generally lose their appeal as the movements mature and mutate into more sophisticated arguments of political bargaining. History is replete with such movements and their eventual acceptance of the political process, over the idea of an armed struggle, as the most feasible mode of accomodating a political compromise and understanding. History also proves, quite clearly, that no problem has been resolved by purely military means or through the imposed force of a military might.

Even though, early in the conflict, there can be a partial tendency towards the use of military force as the most preferred means of settling a problem, the end result has been, generally speaking, a compounding of the political problems. This in turn has made the issues more intractable which resist force and ideas associated with force and in resisting, reinforce the notions of political rigidness that makes conflict and its duration and prolongation more likely and not less likely. The ideas of conflict resolution suggest a preference for political options over military choices and this logic is only accepted once it has become clear, to all the participants in the conflict, that parameters of the issues will not tolerate imposition of ideas without the allowance for dissent in discussing a particular idea or thought, which makes up the crux of the problem.

After nearly ten years of combat and increasing violence, there is a marked visibility that the graph of issues and the understanding of those issues is slowly inching towards a political conflict resolution. The inability of the allied forces to defeat either insurgent/militants in Iraq or Afghanistan, have created a dynamic of thought, which is advocating a more nuanced approach to dealing with the problem. The clarity of a military approach, with its unstinting adherence to the application of force, as the sine qua non of a problem resolution, blinds the policy makers to the caveats of political flexibility that exist, but are over shadowed by the singularity of the military thought. Conflicts become more varied and more prolonged and unsustainable, when the logic of military necessity is allowed to subordinate the considerations of politics and hence, it has been due to the bitter and costly lessons of history, that we have learned the utility of placing military power under a civilian political influence.

A military solution to the problem, be it in Iraq or Afghanistan or anywhere else would be to seek an outright military victory, but a military victory without a political process solidfying its final results has, and will, always be a hollow victory.

Winston Churchill was right, when he intoned that it is better to "jaw-jaw than war-war". There is a reason, why the peace makers are considered as blessed and it now seems that the war on terror is also following a well scripted historical process of evolution and it too, despite the misgivings of its advocates and their erstwhile allies, is moving towards a nuanced political solution by rejecting the simplicity of a military solution to the problem.

Monday, November 15, 2010

Sojourn

Where is the hope in my heart?
Does it still exist some where?
Is it a stranger to me?
Am I lost or have I lost?
Where have the reasons gone by?
Who will find me?

My story is a different one,
And my destination is a different one
Will the person whom I search find me?
My life has become a journey
And in this journey my life has a meaning,
And in that hour of the wolf,
Which is drawing ever closer
It shall end.

Question of Uncertainity

A person went to see an old sage and when in front of the sage, started to weep.

The sage asked the reasons for the tears and the reply was that there is too much suffering in the land and the person wondered when it would all end.

The sage’s reply, to the person, was not to waste tears as tears would be in great demand in the future.

Trawling The Past

Lately I am trawling through pages of World War One and I am discovering fascinating information all the time. I was not even alive at the time of the Great War, but I do admit an unmistakable attraction towards it and towards the men who fought and died during that war. I am not even sure, what are the reasons that draw me towards that war, fought so long ago in a world that now only exists in faded photographs, but I do believe that one of the reasons has to be the universality of the suffering that was endured by the combattants and non-combattants of that war.

Forgetting and ignoring the politics and the military strategies, the one common denominator that is left is the experience of humanity in the trenches. It was a war that, perhaps the only time it has happened, cut across the lines and there was no social or political or sectarian distinctions, but the commonality of a miserable, violent death that unified the experience of the war and made it such a bitter-sweet reminder of a suffering humanity. It was, and started out, as nothing more than a squabble of European nations that quickly seeped into colonial contributions to the war and the dead from the battles of Ypres to Somme and beyond included nationalities that were not even European.

From the Sikh regiments to Moroccan battlions to the Algerian Scouts, from Punjabi to Arabic and from food as varied as the men fought in that epic struggle, they all shared the specter of a death with the Germans, the Italians and Rumanians and the British and French and Russians and off course, the Austro-Hungarians and the Americans. When the war ended, the dead were littered across the fields but due to the constant shelling, their remains could not be retrived till the fighting had finally ended and thus, their remains were consumed in the mud and the sludge of Flanders fields and the remains were mixed up and in death, atleast, so many men from so many lands gained a sense of equality that they could attain while alive.

When irony smiles upon us, the occassion is always unforgettable.

The Dilemma

The question of the hour is the future cognitive development of the Pakistani children and whether, the culture which surrounds them will allow for the level of critical thinking that is required to change the dominant mindset in Pakistan.

How do you teach critical thinking skills to students in a society that does not favor an independent mind?

The Philosopher-King

Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busy-body, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial. All these things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evil. But I who have seen the nature of the good that it is beautiful, and of the bad that it is ugly, and the nature of him who does wrong, that it is akin to me, not only of the same blood or seed, but that it participates in the same intelligence and the same portion of the divinity, I can neither be injured by any of them, for no one can fix on me what is ugly, nor can I be angry with my kinsman, nor hate him, For we are made for co-operation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth. To act against one another then is contrary to nature; and it is acting against one another to be vexed and to turn away.

The Mediations - Book Two
Marcus Aurelius
167 AD

Sunday, November 14, 2010

The Unsurpassed Drama

The passions of a world, on the verge of a catastrophe, are brilliant in their intensity.

The world is not, by any chance, heading towards a terminality of sorts, but its actions do ask the questions as to where will it all stop?

In the meantime, it is fascinating to watch people so motivated in their passions, that they do not seem to realize, that by their very actions, they are destroying what they seek to preserve.

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Forgotten Vistas

The mind is stirring again and given the change of seasons, with the sunlight becoming more bright and less harsher, thoughts swirl in the mind. The process of mental fecundity ferments itself but time does not allow the freedom of expression and the days slip; like grains of sand in the hour glass of indecisions. The heart assumes an air of forelorn stocism not sure, whether it is sad and dejected over the approaching end of another year or over an end of the year that was not so dissimilar to one before it and one that will come next.

Shadows crawl on the walls and the moths worship the flame and the humanity prays at the alter of its own death. Change happens in the midst of the most mundane sense of normality and like a sly of hand, fakes the perception of the beholder drawing lessons, which will not be learned but still repeated like an annoying habit. The march of time is too slow and the people, who are caught up in it, seldom reflect upon the nature of their own transitory roles in the gradual and always progessive evolution of history. History is a progressive idea, because it will continue to toil and seek the future and never will it be content with the comforts of the past. Humans are so preoccupied and impressed by their own inflated egos of self-importance, that they rarely understand that their reactions to the historic pre-destination is what the German philosopher Hegel once attributed as the "clash of great ideas".

In the end, what matters is not the ebb and flow of humanity but the immutibility of ideas and each passing generation that trods upon the stage of life, re-interprets those ideas whose insights give the needed impetus for the march of human endeavor to continue unabated. The beauty of an argument does not reside in its agreement, bur rather it lies in the excellence of its disagreements and such too is the precedent with history and the story of humanity within the pages of the Book of Experience.

The brilliance of life is not measured by its success, but the manner in which it is lived and those who learn this truism, to them alone does wisdom belong. Wisdom is not the ability to devour knowledge but to apply that knowledge in a practical sense, for intelligence can never be a good replacement for common sense. Intelligence does not educate the senses as much as it preaches the art of forgiving and learning from past mistakes.

An Old Song

This land must change or this land must burn.

Midnight Oil

Ethical Rationalism

Logic and reason may prevail and ultimately be proven as right, but hopefully logic and reason will never be a replacement for what is right and what is wrong.

Friday, November 12, 2010

The Toils of Sin

A Christian woman sentenced to death for committing blasphemy in Pakistan followed by a massive bomb blast, politicans debating non-issues and the prices soaring higher and ever higher out of the reach of the people; no law; no order; no justice and militants and mafia of every sort and hue running amok; the currency devaluing and cheapening life in the process as well and amidst all this the pantomime of rituals continues unabated. Floods and earthquakes later, fatalism turns into a weariness and life moves ahead but without a clue to the direction it is heading while the so-called navigators argue and debate the many points of compass looking confused - unable to tell the difference with a sunrise and a sunset and unable to fix their position.

The United States vamping up its drone missile strikes inside Pakistan and with Pakistan a war zone; its cities the battlegrounds and its hapless peoople dead and dying, what is there left to question?

These are the rewards for the toil of sin and when every injustice is justified and every transgression is appeased this is what happens, the evil created comes to haunt its very fathers. In the name of religion, Pakistan tried to purify itself and it sought and burned all the heretics to its ideals of purity and proclaimed its vision as heavenly blessed. It ruined and destoryed all the laws that stood in the path of  its fanatical zeal to find the proverbial devil of its imaginations and having cut down the laws, like trees in a forest, it now finds there is no place to hide from the devil, which is stalking it and taunting it by unleashing the winds of chaos and anarchy.

Sullen, morose and morgantic, the country limps towards an unpredictable horizon but yet adamant not to seek the balm of introspection and still resentful to reality for blemishing its versions of utopias and always angry at the world for not appreciating its follies, which are mindlessly scapegoated to myriad reasons. When rationales are selectively decided and responsibility is derided and rejected and sought to be escaped from, then the wages of sin; the labor of intolerance, hatred, oppression, injustice, cruelty firmly believed and practiced as a disdain to all that this is human, decent and proper, becomes the face of death.

Everything must change or die and then, the question becomes of what the people are prepared to do to save themselves from themselves for none other they can save themselves and if the Gods wanted to destroy Pakistan, then the Pakistanis are certainly going mad and doing God's work.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Rememberance Day

The game is afoot Sherlock Holmes used to say to Dr. Watson when great things were about be expected and the great game of Rudyard Kipling, which has been played across the centuries in one of the most least understood places on the earth, is once more stirring with possibilities. The end of the year is approaching and today, November 11, marked the end of the fighting in the Great War in 1918 four years after it was promised that the boys would be home before Christmas. So many wars were promised would end before the first leafs fell from the trees and so many soldiers never came home. With the recent announcement  by Canada that it might "reconsider" its committment to Afghanistan and might have to stay beyond July 2011 deadline, and with the United States also peddling the idea that its withdrawal date of July 2011 is not exactly gospel, the war in Afghanistan seems destined to fester like a sore wound.

The very idea of affixing a deadline to the war in Afghanistan and declaring when it is over, would be a laughable proposition had not so many people suffered and died. The idea that wars can be fought as some sort of a well choreographed event must be the most sublime limits of banality known in exsistence and only novices, who have no clue as to what wars entail, could have made such a declaration of intent. The end of a war is determined by the clarity of its political goals and how successfully those goals have been achieved by the application of a military power. The origins of a military strategy in a war resides in the political reasons for fighting a war and if the politics of the war, themselves, appear fuddled and muddled then war, which is nothing less than an application of violence for intended reasons, loses its coherence of purpose.

The politics of the Afghan War need to be articulated, because if the aims of the war itself are not clear to those who are fighting it, then the nagging question becomes "what are we fighting for?" This is the reason why the deadlines for withdrawal from Afghanistan are being blurred, because while everyone agrees on the need to defeat the Taliban and the Al-Qaeda, there appears to be no consensus on how to actualize this intention in a tangible sense. Between the ideas of winning the hearts and minds to military operations to doctrines of counter-insurgency and to debates of nation-building, the aims of the Afghan war emerge as confused, filled with self-doubts and self-defeating.

Defeating the enemy, in this case the Taliban and Al Qaeda axis of Islamic militancy, and stating so is only a declaration of intent. The problem is how to realize this goal. The irony of this war is that while technology provides the United States and its allies with the capacity to kill, the religion of the Taliban and Al Qaeda gives them the capacity to die. In a sense, this war as it is being fought presently, is a stalemate and United States has to develop a political rationale, which breaks this statemate; between technology and religion as the enabling factors, which are sustaining and prolonging this war and mutating it into a 21st century version of the Great War.

If the First World War proved anything it was that killing the enemy does not end a war, but breaking his will to resist is the most expedient avenue towards ending a war. Therefore, the salient caveat is how to break the political will of the Taliban and Al Qaeda inside Afghanistan and the answer is not a simple case of putting limitations on political Islam, but exploring the possibilities of how to separate the nuances, which exist in the intentions, capabilities, and rationales of political Islam and to understand Islam, itself, as an idea and as a way of life for the Muslims in order counter the arguments of Islamic militancy. Political Islam and Islamic militancy are a closely inter-related phenomena in the sense that Islamic militancy derives its reasons not necessarily from Islam per se, but from the politics practiced in the name of Islam and to understand that, the United States would have to understand the causes, which propell political Islam.

One of the causes, which has offered more legitimacy than others to the cause of a politically militant Islam has been the faliure of the governments, in the Muslim world, to address the needs of its people and offer them better goverance and a more secure way of life, which ensures their future happiness and prosperty. This is where a sense of rage against the United States finds its reasons in the Muslim world and though the outward manifestation of this rage appears directed at the United States, it is really a sign of political frustration by the people at their own governments, which deny them the venues of expressing political opinions and dissent. The fact that the government in Afghanistan and for that matter in Pakistan are allied with the United States further creates the impression of their political impotence in the face of United States' pursuit of its interests, which are invaribly seen as being attained at the costs of political freedoms of the people of these countries. It is this sense of a political grievence, which is really fueling the political militancy against the United States in Afghanistan, and in Pakistan as well.

Therefore, for the United States to win the war inside Afghanistan and defeat the Taliban and Al Qaeda insurgency and its support from across the border in Pakistan, is to admit to itself that its chosen partners in this war are not entirely popular in their own political constituencies in AF-PAK. The idea of the Obama administration to designate the area of combat as AF-PAK was correct, but the political capital which the United States is investing in the region should not be directed towards the political leadership of AF-PAK, but towards removing the popular dissatisfaction that exists in that part of the world against its own government by exploring the idea of public diplomacy; interactive political approaches, which allows the United States to directly reach the people with its political message instead of going through the intermediaries, the political leadership of AF-PAK, who are more atuned to their own self-interests than to the interests of their country or its fellow citizens.

This is the political reason for which this war is being fought and for the United States to "bring back the troops" has to decide on a political policy that forces the political leadership of AF-PAK to provide the very basic needs which their people are clamouring for and for the United States to disassociate itself from a tainted political leadership, which is more of the enemy than it is an ally of the United States in this war. The Taliban and Al Qaeda can never politically or military defeat the United States, but the policies of its allies in AF-PAK, unless addressed, will continue to offer themselves as the best recruiting poster for the Taliban and Al Qaeda and thus, the question begs an answer whether the United States is capable of understanding the political nature of this war and what continually keeps it enflamed and can it end it by amending its present policies or by refusing to acknowledge the reasons of this war, wishes for a war without an end?

This was the reason, why this blog was titled as "Rememberance Day". November 11, is marked as Veterans Day in the United States and in the United Kingdom and its former colonies, it is called as Rememberance Day and there is a very subtle difference in the meaning of what this day implies in the United States from the rest of the world. A "veteran" is someone who has survived and returned from war and when the United States celebrates Veteran's Days, it pays tributes to those that that fought its wars, and in the rest of the world, rememberance day means to remember those that died in the wars. Some times, how we approach and understand the idea of a war, as a nation and a people, can make all the difference in the manner of how and why we fight wars and how we remember our past wars and what lessons we learn from them.

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Erasmus, in his book, The Praise of Folly, writes about the hypocrisy of the priests, but if the word "priest" were to be subsituted with the word "mullah", the context of the satire would remain unchanged.

Below are few selected paragraphs from "The Praise of Folly"
*************************

ORATION: MONKS

Monks that Call Themselves Religious

And next these come those that commonly call themselves the religious and monks, most false in both titles, when both a great part of them are farthest from religion, and no men swarm thicker in all places than themselves. Nor can I think of anything that could be more miserable did not I support them so many several ways. For whereas all men detest them to the height, that they take it for ill luck to meet one of them by chance, yet such is their happiness that they flatter themselves. For first, they reckon it one of the main points of piety if they are so illiterate that they can't so much as read. And then when they run over their offices, which they carry about them, rather by tale than understanding, they believe the gods more than ordinarily pleased with their braying. And some there are among them that put off their trumperies at vast rates, yet rove up and down for the bread they eat; nay, there is scarce an inn, wagon, or ship into which they intrude not, to the no small damage of the commonwealth of beggars. And yet, like pleasant fellows, with all this vileness, ignorance, rudeness, and impudence, they represent to us, for so they call it, the lives of the apostles.

Yet what is more pleasant than that they do all things by rule and, as it were, a kind of mathematics, the least swerving from which were a crime beyond forgiveness- as how many knots their shoes must be tied with, of what color everything is, what distinction of habits, of what stuff made, how many straws broad their girdles and of what fashion, how many bushels wide their cowl, how many fingers long their hair, and how many hours sleep; which exact equality, how disproportionate it is, among such variety of bodies and tempers, who is there that does not perceive it? And yet by reason of these fooleries they not only set slight by others, but each different order, men otherwise professing apostolical charity, despise one another, and for the different wearing of a habit, or that 'tis of darker color, they put all things in combustion. And among these there are some so rigidly religious that their upper garment is haircloth, their inner of the finest linen; and, on the contrary, others wear linen without and hair next their skins. Others, again, are as afraid to touch money as poison, and yet neither forbear wine nor dallying with women. In a word, 'tis their only care that none of them come near one another in their manner of living, nor do they endeavor how they may be like Christ, but how they may differ among themselves.

One shall show you a large trough full of all kinds of fish; another tumble you out so many bushels of prayers; another reckon you so many myriads of fasts, and fetch them up again in one dinner by eating till he cracks again; another produces more bundles of ceremonies than seven of the stoutest ships would be able to carry; another brags he has not touched a penny these three score years without two pair of gloves at least upon his hands; another wears a cowl so lined with grease that the poorest tarpaulin would not stoop to take it up; another will tell you he has lived these fifty-five years like a sponge, continually fastened to the same place; another is grown hoarse with his daily chanting; another has contracted a lethargy by his solitary living; and another the palsy in his tongue for want of speaking.

And yet these kind of people, though they are as it were of another commonwealth, no man dares despise, especially those begging friars, because they are privy to all men's secrets by means of confessions, as they call them. Which yet were no less than treason to discover, unless, being got drunk, they have a mind to be pleasant, and then all comes out, that is to say by hints and conjectures but suppressing the names. But if anyone should anger these wasps, they'll sufficiently revenge themselves in their public sermons and so point out their enemy by circumlocutions that there's no one but understands whom 'tis they mean, unless he understand nothing at all; nor will they give over their barking till you throw the dogs a bone.

Good God! what several postures they have! How they shift their voice, sing out their words, skip up and down, and are ever and anon making such new faces that they confound all things with noise! And yet this knack of theirs is no less a mystery that runs in succession from one brother to another...

...But these learned men think their preamble, for so they call it, then chiefly rhetorical when it has least coherence with the rest of the argument, that the admiring audience may in the meanwhile whisper to themselves, "What will he be at now?"

Here they erect their theological crests and beat into the people's ears those magnificent titles of illustrious doctors, subtle doctors, most subtle doctors, seraphic doctors, cherubin doctors, holy doctors, unquestionable doctors, and the like; and then throw abroad among the ignorant people syllogisms, majors, minors, conclusions, corollaries, suppositions...

But they have heard from somebody, I know not whom, that the beginning of a speech should be sober and grave and least given to noise. And therefore they begin theirs at that rate they can scarce hear themselves, as if it were not matter whether anyone understood them. They have learned somewhere that to move the affections a louder voice is requisite. Whereupon they that otherwise would speak like a mouse in a cheese start out of a sudden into a downright fury...

Again, because they have heard that as a speech comes up to something, a man should press it more earnestly, they, however they begin, use a strange contention of voice in every part, though the matter itself be never so flat, and end in that manner as if they'd run themselves out of breath...

Lastly, such is their whole action that a man would swear they had learned it from our common tumblers, though yet they come short of them in every respect...

(source: In The Praise Of Folly; Fordham University website/classics)

Sunday, November 7, 2010

A New Rome

I wish, I should have saved the copy of that article, which was talking about the decline of the American power. The author mentioned that in his farewell speech in 1961, Dwight David Eisenhower edited his speech before delivering it. In the speech, Eisenhower had sought to the warn the nation about the growing influence of the industrial-military complex. The orginal line was "industrial-military-congressional complex", which Ike edited by deleting the word "congressional" from it.

Makes sense, does it not?

Congress passes the defense authorization bills, which generate all defense related activity and there is not a single congressional district in the republic, which does not have a military base or a defense related business. According to the recent General Accounting Office's report, there are 6000 military bases throughout the United States and another 120 overseas. During the Vietnam War, the United States lost nearly 5,000 helicopters. They were all replaced.

Some one must have made a nice profit.

Like Rome, so many years ago, has the American republic changed into a pretorian state?

Friday, November 5, 2010

In Response to Caroline

I do not think that it is only the Americans, who are looking for a “sign” from above.

Back in the old homeland, they are still waiting for the messiah to come.

As to praying Obama and the Democrats out of office, one has to debate the power of the prayer in the United States. In the 1990s, the holy mantra was the Christian Coalition but that did not mean a re-discovery of religion and with the preachers on the TV, prayer become a sound-byte in the United States and religion, all shades of it as practiced on television, is a new form of entertainment packaged with monetary values in mind and popularly commercialized.

Religion has lost its spirituality, at least from what it seemed to me, and has become a part of the popular culture. How can you ask for guidance form a popular culture? Even so, will you recognize the signs, when they appear? I think, the most telling comment on this issue perhaps belongs to the words of “Sounds of Silence” by Simon & Garfunkle, when words to the song say “…and the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they had created….”.

When I think back and remember that the song was orginally commissioned for the movie, The Graduate, an esoteric smile creeps across my face. The movie was about alienation and the anguish of making choices and we have all, at one stage or another, experienced the paralysis of indecision in our lives and is a prayer not offered, but to seek guidance to escape from a paralysis of indecision?

Is religion a chisel to the human soul which is like a block of marble and guidance the act of the Master Sculptor, who chips the stone and shapes the marble into an expression of His Will?

One has to know what one wishes for in order to ask for guidance, because otherwise a prayer is only a collection of words devoid of any sense of awe and spirituality. The fear of God and once that sentiment is lost in the hearts of the followers, is what disabuses a religion in the popular imagination and religion becomes a hollow rhetorical capstone to a social joke uttered for the sake of banality if for nothing else.

You asked “why” and my cynical answer is that with the commercialization of religion, we might have, perhaps, subsituted God with Santa Claus and like our Christmas wishes, which have more to do with our wanton sense of greed and possessions and egoism, our prayers have become a new “Christmas list” of sorts seeking and demanding instant material gratification of self-indulgence instead of a guidance to the betterment of the soul.

Then again, on a different level and from a different perspective, it is about a loss of hope and a prayer is associated with the last act performed in a situation filled with desperation. When nothing works, we revert to saying a prayer, because it calms us and reassures us and personally speaking, Americans praying Obama and the Democrats away makes perfect sense in a symbolic sense.

The American electorate suffered an irrepairable loss of belief in their political system and in their politicans after Watergate. If John F. Kennedy’s Camelot was to be the realization of the Amerian hope; Watergate was the death spasm of that hope. Watergate disassociated the Americans from the believe that the government was for the good of the people and in the subsequent events after Watergate, the political experience of the American electorate was similar to that of Alice in the Wonderland deciding between Twiddle Dee and Twiddle Dum for their elected leaders.

Hence, it was the same sentiment which the Americans expressed about George Bush, Jr. and how they could “wish” him away. It was the end of the idealism and that idealism, literally died, not when John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas in 1963, but when Robert F. Kennedy was shot after winning the California primary in 1968 and when for a brief shining moment, in the dark gloom of the Vietnam War, the dream for Camelot seemed possible and within reach once more.

Remember the words Robert F. Kennedy said, when told of the death of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. He was campaigning in the Deep South and against advice, waded into a group of a silent crowd of African-Americans and told them the news and then said some words from an ancient Greek: let us go out and tame the savage nature of this world and make gentle the life of man.

Praying Obama and the Demcrats away is like praying for rain; it says more about our own innate loss of confidence in the political system than it actually bespeaks of a religious fervour.

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Gratitude

Do you remember the child playing in the dirt and
Laughing under the bright sun,
Did you see the glint of joy in his eyes and the sheen of confidence in his smile,
Did you ever wonder, what was his object of happiness,
The whole world was his playground; his dream,
Do you remember the proud face filled determination
And did you see the Hand of Fate upon his shoulder,
Did you know what happened to him?

Where were you, when they gave him a rifle
And a flag to cover his coffin?

Do you remember the child playing in the dirt and laughing under the sun,
And will you remember him, when he comes in your dreams and
Asks you why, he no longer smiles in your dreams?


Written in memory of all those, who wore their nation's uniform and died in its name and who were asked to do so by us - the still living.

A Democratic Joke

Democracy does not come from holding elections and electing people to office. In Pakistan, this is the idea of demcoracy and this is the summation of a democracy. In Pakistan, democracy is a slogan, which many people in this nation do not understand.

Expectations of democracy, in Pakistan, are as naive as the expectations of a one-legged man winning a butt-kicking contest.

It stuns the thinking imagination that chief antagonists of democracy in Pakistan are the political parties, which themselves do not practice democracy in their own ranks. The political parties of Pakistan, which claim to represent the democratic interests of the people, are lorded over by personalities whose claim to powerful positions in their parties are based on their birth rights and whose tenure of office is measured in life times. The councils of these political parties are elected in the silent, murky halls of power, without a debate or a vote cast, but on the basis of expediency.

Pakistan should not expect democracy from its political parties, when these political parties actually believe in autocratic feudalism.

Democracy in Pakistan is nothing more than the old wine of feudalism and reactionism bottled in new bottles and disseminated to the public in a highly glossy public-relations campaign.

Democracy for whom?

There is no democracy. In the rural areas, there is no choice for the peasants of Pakistan, because if they elect anyone besides their feudal lord and master, their final reward for their act of indepedence will be a slow and painful death and to be mourned by none. The pitful slogan of democracy only exists in cities and it is only in the cities that the semi-educated pseudo intellects can claim to discuss democracy.

Pakistan would not be able to define democracy even if someone taught it the defination, because its edcuational system is so bad, that all it can hope to do is memorize "democracy" and keep repeating it like a prized parrot.

The real tragedy of democracy in Pakistan is that when the circus of the fools comes to town, most of the people will be too improvished to even afford tickets to the ringside.

What democracy and for whom?

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Hope

I am big fan of Jim Morrison and maybe this is the end in Pakistan or atleast in the most minor sense, it is a parting of the ways. Writing about the present political situation is never easy, because having lived through some very poignant events in our common national history and remembering what came of the promises, I would have to sadly agree, with what the famous poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz said that this might be another false dawn.

Having lived in Pakistan makes one into a cynic and the depression of the soul is never in doubt, but the disappointments of wishing and not actually realizing your dreams, also makes one into a realist and pragmatic about the nature of events. Even forgetting the abused dreams of my childhood and ignoring the vistas of seeing the developments in Pakistan, from afar, the hope for this nation; of a new re-birth never dies despite all the acculmative evidence of failures, which have been heaped upon the mantle of this nation and its people. There is really no point in blaming or seeking to blame unless, we are willing to blame ourselves for our apathy, which has played crucial part in the overall national failures associated with Pakistan.

This sojorn into romanticism, is alien to my nature, and I will soon step out of it, but like Rick in Casablanca, there is a part of me that yearns to hope but dares not, because of the memory of the last hope that was sacrificed upon the altar of hypocrisy. I am too old; too weary and too sad to pin my hopes again in the idea of seeing another dawn and maybe, I will not live to see the real dawn, when ever it break over this land and its children of the midnight. For a nation, that was germinated in the red fires of hell, the fires still hover all around us and burn us and it seems that they will never fade from our existence and we will remain forever burned.

The future may shine bright in the eyes of a child, but it has lost its shine in the eyes of those, who have seen and lived the events of the past, which have asundered this nation and changed its people. I am a professional cynic par excellence, who scoffs at notions of idealism, but even I, have to make a gruding admission that had it not been for the idealists of the world, I would have appeased my sanity a long while back to the forces of hopelessness. In all the darkness, which surrounds me like a bottomless pit, in the words of the old poem, I shall not cringe or wince under the blows of chance. I may not be the captain of my soul or the master of my fate, but I do see the wisdom of those, who continually place their faith; for this nation and themselves in the guidance of Jinnah.

Jinnah to me is a historic figure and as I deal with the problems of living in a nation that he created, he has no place in my thoughts as I pass his portraits each day lost in my own thoughts. In those thoughts, when his name crosses in my mind, I respect his memory not for his politics or his achievments, but because of his sense of duty and loyality to a cause regardless of how we may judge that cause. His is the only memory, which I can recall that was true to this nation and its people. This is the only grace, which allows for my hopes, about this nation, to flicker.

This nation, will be a better place and would be less confused if it started to pay attention to the character of Jinnah; not in his politics, but in his personal life and learn, what seperates him from the rest of his successors and why, despite the hardships and the disappointments, the people still remember his memory and that too, with respect and fondness.

The distinction is that the people of Pakistan, to their core, believe that Jinnah believed in them and all those who followed Jinnah to rule and lord over this nation, did not believe in the people but in the stars of their own glory. It is this sentiment that gives hope to an ordinary person, when confronted with the daily spectacle of dispair in Pakistan that the dream of this nation will remain alive as long as the memory of M. A. Jinnah remains alive in the heart and the minds of the citizens of a nation he created

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Practioners of War

One of the first things, taught to young lawyers, in law schools is never ask a question to which you do not know the answer. The same lesson can also be applied to the military and the manner in which it conducts itself and fights in its campaigns. This lesson and the question, which it raises are important when the issue is how best to combat and defeat an insurgency. Insurgency can be generic and not specific to any part of the globe. Regardless of the nature of the insurgency, the doubt still lingers whether the military, engaged in counter-insurgency operations (COIN), knows what it is supposed to be doing in order to defeat a particular insurgency.

The answer, then, would depend if the military understands the nature of the insurgency that confronts it and it will only understand the nature of the insurgency, if it asks the right questions, for example, about the source and the motivation of the insurgency.

Even asking the right questions does not imply that a military force can defeat the insurgency, because the critical element then becomes, whether the military has the institutional, philosophical and even a political capacity to accept the answers to its own questions.

As the old adage suggests, and suggests correctly, every future military generation learns to fight the past and thus, is woefully unprepared to deal with a future conflict with all of its attendant uncertainties. It is an institutional fault, which makes this possible, because what future military officers are taught, in military academies all over the world, is how to fight the battles of the past. Given the curriculum of the military academies and their importance of studying warfare through the experience of the past, the lesson which is, thus, taught confuses the nature of the battle with its political reasons.

Military schools, by their very nature, are technocratic cults preaching a version of martial nirvana to their disciples. The institutional raison d’ etre of a military academy is to study the past and understand why a given battle was a failure and in this, the lessons of military academies can be, at best, formulaic. The graduates of military academies, for most part believe that they have discovered the skeleton key to all future military problems and if given rein, they can provide the right solution.

What is not thoroughly learned or understood at military academies is that wars, or for that matter fighting insurgencies, are efforts of political longevity and not a calculus in the application of military force.

Herein lies the rub, because the failure to understand the political causes of a conflict, invariably, leads to a strategy that instead of winning the conflict ends up simply reinforcing failure.

Military academies and the professional general staffs, which they produce, are mindful of the role of politics in a war but they fail to realize is that politics of a conflict is more fluid than the military plans for that particular conflict.

Every general staff prepares its nation’s future battle plans keeping in view the political and regional military environment and the reason for which general staffs were created in the first place, was to help coordinate their nation’s political response to a conflict.

Therefore, most general staffs and the armies they represent are bureaucracies of a different sort and being such, are prone to what is generally referred to as “bureaucratic inertia”. What this implies is that as a rule military plans tend to be rigid and a lot slower to adapt to changing political circumstances and in this way, they are more of a nuisance than a benefit in a given crisis.

Wars, and for that matter insurgencies, are endeavors of political patience and their end is determined not by the unstinting use of raw power but rather by the most flexible political guile a nation can muster. The nature of a war is as unique as the political question which underlies it and therefore, no two wars will be ever alike in their nature and in their scope. The political considerations of a conflict must be kept foremost in the mind, because a conflict being political nature, will mutate rapidily over a given period of time and in that time, the reasons which started it may be amended or even discarded by the time it ends.

Military plans must never be allowed to influence politics, because just as the nature of wars change, politics too must change to accomodate the changed nature of the conflict itself. A conflict that becomes too militarized tends to lose the flexibility to adapt to new political realities. Military must always be kept under a political control so that its application of force can be guided by the constraints and opportunties of politics and not by the logic of what is commonly known as "military necessity".

A military conflict, which attains a political aim for which it was fought, will be more successful than a conflict which is fought endlessly without its political intention clarified.

It is a pity that most wars are started without even realizing what they are being fought for and it is a lack of this reason, which makes for the tragedy of a war as a metaphor of needless loss and sufferings.

Sadness

Once in a while, lucidity seeps into the mundane and offers a clarity of vision, which stands apart and out from the ordinary. I have been around events and coincidences to realize that if given a chance and some lease, the problems and issues usually sort themselves out. What is right and what is wrong can never be denied and those who deny them will reap the bitter wages of regret. I have seen enough tricks of the vocabulary and heard enough tales of Orwellian humor to last a life time and in the end, they have only left me sad; sad at the grief that stems from a loss of hope.

Hope is a very elusive commodity and it is so fragile that it must be protected and it must be nourished constantly lest it withers away. It is the theme that binds a myriad story of life and like the contortations of the Gordian Knot, it must never be untangled for the supreme mystery of hope lies not in its attainment but in the dream of its eventual actualization. The loss of hope is a tragedy never to be surpassed in the long drama of human toil and joy and therefore, we must remind ourselves what hope really is and what the world without it will resemble.

The loss of hope can lead to suicide and it can tear a country apart and it can bring a night of despondency so dark that it becomes impossible to believe in the light of a new dawn. Worse than the loss of hope is the disappointment in hope itself and that creeping sense of alienation which comes from a betrayal; an act that makes us question the very things we believed in but do not believe in anymore, because the believe in what we once cherished becomes the pathway to a certain heart break.

I cry for my country because my country is crying and there is a lash that lacerates me and leaves me pained and in all my pain and suffering, I see the shadow move across the land and beneath the shadow exists intolerance, death, indifference and sadism. I have gone through many different avatars and I am not the child I once was and nor am I the man I once used to be, but a reed caught in the dilemmas of opportunistic winds that blow across my way.

How many times will I ache to see the end of this contantly lightless dawn and in of all this, I refuse to accept this ritual as the hallmark of envitability. I do not believe that change is unthinkable and nor do I think that it will not come; for like tide and time, all must move forward towards that infinity in space where time dissolves into a memory that ripples through eternity.

I believe that the wages of sin is death and my country has sinned and it will have to bear the long and hard suffering, that is its due, before it is purged of the evil that resides within it and mocks all those who stand against the forces of hopelessness. In this battle for the soul of my poor country and its hapless citizens, there must be hope in the final settlement of accounts and a hope that out of this fire of blood and tears will arise a better world in which to build, create and to love and be loved.

There must be a believe in the final victory and though I may not see the end of this battle, I know the end and the world that emerges from these ashes will be a far, far better place than the present. The question then becomes not one of courage to battle the foe, but the question of how to believe in the hope of a future when there is no reason to cling to such a sentiment and when all around us, there is nothing but the chilling echo of a souless voice that heralds only the arrival of sorrow and misery.

In the very end, I will not accept this bleak reality but struggle against it and in that struggle will lie my salavation. I have nothing to lose but my hope and that is one option, which I refuse to consider as a final option to be compromised upon the alter of expediency. The power of change lies in the individual and when the many become one and the one become many and we believe in the change itself; change we wish to see, then that very change will occur.

I may be not around to see the change, but I have hope that the change will come sooner rather than later and it may be delayed but it can never be denied and in this hope, I will hope

Monday, November 1, 2010

The Journey's End?

On a cold January, in the first twenty-first year of the last century, a play written by a former soldier who had served in the trenches of the Great War, opened in London. The response was immediate and it was one of utter amazement. The play was called The Journey's End and I remember seeing it, performed, in Ottawa many years ago. It was the first realistic look at life during a war devoid of the gleams of patriotism and disrobed of any cloak of nationalism and it showed, in words of a seldom remembered poet, the hell where youth and laughter go and how glad we should be that we will never know how that place, and where our dreams of patriotism and glory end.

The realism of the play was a slap in the face of a generation that never truly understood what was the true face of war. F .E. Manning was right; the real face of war is our own face and the reason why we dislike looking at our reflection in the mirror is because, it is ugly and it mocks our own sense of a faux vanity, created on an ediface of a hollow pride.

The play's title is also an introspection of how the human mind changes and the progress by which we mature to new ideas and new thoughts. T. S. Elliot, once wrote in his poem, "The Hollow Man", that between reality and the idea lies the shadow and it is in shade of that shadow, where most of us pass our days debating the proverbial cross-roads of our choices.

From the realm of unthinkability to the shores of thinkability to the firm ground of the inevitability is how the evolution of reality progresses. In Pakistan, we have crossed over from what was once unthinkable to the thinkable and are now staring at the inevitable, which is staring back at us and what we do from here is upto us and our actions, will decide how our story will be told to the generations who will come after us.

November

The start of something new, which only time will tell where it will end.