Operation Enduring Scoundrels.

The world of politics, they say, turns on a pinhead.
President George W. Bush and Pakistan’s dictator Pervez Mussharaf know that all too well. Pre 9/11, both of them were struggling to defend their legitimacy in office. It may be forgotten by now, but Bush lost the popular vote and won the elections after a very questionable ballot in Florida. Commentators routinely ridiculed him for lacking the presidential gravitas and his stupidity and ignorance were combustible fodder for the comic circuit.
How forgiving a war can be.
Musharaff’s claim to Pakistan’s presidency, after overthrowing an elected government in a bloodless coup, was even more dubious. He was a pariah in the international community. When President Clinton dropped in on Pakistan during a visit to India, photographs were forbidden so as not to confer any aura of legitimacy on an army thug who had grabbed power after moving tanks to the house of the elected prime minister.
On Feb 13 Musharraf will be feted at the White House. Ever since he was arm twisted by the Bush administration into aligning his country with the United States and forced to disavow the Taliban, which the Pakistani intelligence had spawned, Musharraf, has become the toast of the Washington establishment.
The Machiavellian, backstabbing general is even being likened to former Egyptian President and Nobel Peace Prize winning statesman Anwar Sadat. Rumors abound of the special affinity between him and U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, himself a product of the U.S. Army. There are even reports that his much-heralded speech in January disavowing terrorism, while embracing the moral and political cause of Kashmiri separatists, waged in large part through a campaign of unremitting terror, was vetted by the U.S. State Department and Secretary Powell himself.
Suddenly the two-timing, rogue general discovers himself cast into the role of pied piper of modernism in the Islamic World. Such is the world of real politicks.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair has pronounced that no matter what the cause, terrorism and violence are never defensible. What a noble sentiment. Ironic that it comes from a leader of the West that over the years financed, supplied, trained and harbored “freedom fighters” of every shade and stripe worldwide. And that participated in a violent resolution of the current terrorism emanating out of Afghanistan.
Ironic also that so soon after deriding the brutality and viciousness of the Taliban and al-Qaida, the Bush administration’s abusive treatment of POWs has itself come under fire from human rights groups. The Bush administration is wary of declaring the prisoners (who incidentally are being kept at bay in Cuba, to preclude intervention by U.S. courts) as POWs, which would entitle them to the protections of the Geneva Convention. They are brutal and remorseless killers, undeserving of the legalism of international conventions, the U.S. government argues. A spokesman declared that the prisoners should consider themselves “lucky to be in the custody of our military, because they’re receiving three square meals a day.’’
Curious that the same arguments would likely have justified rejecting the protections for Nazi POWs as well. But then these, we are told, are “unconventional times” and well-meaning conventions must be “interpreted in a modern light.”
Hubris dances on a pin tip too.

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