Friday, July 20, 2007
Defeat for General Musharraf
And In the domestic front, the Bushies have found the enemy
By ruling against President Musharraf in the case about constitutionality of the sacking of chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, Pakistan's supreme Court sent a clear signal. It is, of course, a major defeat for General Musharraf who wants to continue military rule in Pakistan. Our government is a strong backer of Musharraf because of his role in the fight against terror. When it comes to such things we pay lip service to democracy and rights of the people. Nothing new about that.
Many of us have been saying the same thing but Keith Olbermann of MSNBC does it better. His scathing indictment of the president and his cohorts in Countdown should be a must read for all who oppose what they have done in Iraq.
Excerpts: Go to Iraq and fight, Mr. President It is one of the great, dark, evil lessons, of history. A country — a government — a military machine — can screw up a war seven ways to Sunday. It can get thousands of its people killed. It can risk the safety of its citizens. It can destroy the fabric of its nation. But as long as it can identify a scapegoat, it can regain or even gain power. The Bush administration has opened this Pandora’s Box about Iraq. It has found its scapegoats: Hillary Clinton and us. The lies and terror tactics with which it deluded this country into war — they had nothing to do with the abomination that Iraq has become. It isn’t Mr. Bush’s fault. The selection of the wrong war, in the wrong time, in the wrong place — the most disastrous geopolitical tactic since Austria-Hungary attacked Serbia in 1914 and destroyed itself in the process — that had nothing to do with the overwhelming crisis Iraq has become. It isn’t Mr. Bush’s fault. The continuing, relentless, remorseless, corrupt and cynical insistence that this conflict somehow is defeating or containing or just engaging the people who attacked us on 9/11, the total “Alice Through the Looking Glass” quality that ignores that in Iraq, we have made the world safer for al-Qaida — it isn’t Mr. Bush’s fault! Sen. Clinton has been sent — and someone has leaked to The Associated Press — a letter, sent in reply to hers asking if there exists an actual plan for evacuating U.S. troops from Iraq. This extraordinary document was written by an undersecretary of defense named Eric Edelman. “Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq,” Edelman writes, “reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia.” And now Mr. Bush, you have picked out your own Jefferson Davis, your own Dreyfus, your own “profiteer” — your own scapegoat. Not for the sake of this country. Not for the sake of Iraq. Not even for the sake of your own political party. But for the sake of your own personal place in history. You have set this government at war against its own people and then blamed those very people when they say, “Enough.” This, sir, is your war. Sen. Clinton has reinforced enemy propaganda? Made it impossible for you to get your ego-driven, blood-steeped win in Iraq? Then take it into your own hands, Mr. Bush. Go to Baghdad now and fulfill, finally, your military service obligations. Go there and fight, your war. Yourself. |
