Communicating Arts - Main Web SiteI've said many good things about Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf who has done, imho, a terrific job of navigating between the essential Islamic character of his country and the proto-fascist forces of capitalist cabal that would present the culture with two incompatible visions of its own future.
It's either my ignorance or knowledge but certainly my crayon-wielding belief that "mercantilism" or the rise of the retailing city class contributed to displacing the power of the medieval lords in Europe and eventually supported the revolt against monarchy on general terms. With news sources now aiding in the ressurection of Benazir Bhutto's march toward Islamabad, Pakistan may experience the ghosts of feudal lords and knights through, essentially, a Bhutto-Musharraf compact.
Pundits on yesterday's France24 program [2] were asked if candidates with records tainted by corruption issues should be allowed to return and run in the country's elections. To my surprise, most or all (I'm not looking at the video again) said yes: let the voters decide.
Americans have been made familiar with voting too often for the lesser of evils, and one may fear or feel for Pakistanis thrust into a similar position.
For those myopic in the west, Bhutto-Musharraf may look like capitalist royalty, very well educated, comfortable, humanist and practical in their policies, Islamic in spirit; however, to a society that may wish not to become American, British, or Dutch (or similar other), the pairing of a woman from a wealthy old house, never mind the haunt of corruption scandals, and a soldier somewhat out of the old colonial school may look exactly as hardline clerics might care to frame it: instead of Allah, rule by the corrupt, wealthy, and powerful.
On the other hand: who else?
One suspects all other candidates may court a conservative Islamic vote with fear of violent reprisal by Islamic militants should any oppose them directly.
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Despite the bellowing of imaginary gored oxes in U.S. politics, the country's internal security apparatus has been even-handed as regards the prosecution of extremists on both the political left and right. Christians who bomb abortion clinics get the same attention and treatment as bomb enthusiasts of other stripe. In general, however, our cultural and political fault lines are very different from those apparant in Islam.
For examples, our Blues and Reds--Democrats and Republicans--sling a lot of invective over material distribution: education, health care, taxes.
Like most families, we argue a lot about money.
As the pursuit and practice of religion is relegated first to individual choice and then left to organization by community entrepreneurs--churches, synagoges, mosques--there's no motivation for divisiveness in that area apart from interest, perhaps, in prosyletizing practices, which here are just plain unfailingly polite.
On occassion when they're not, and nasty organizations pop up on the landscape now and then, they're met with derision, and if associated with violence, then with FBI curiosity.
In foreign affairs and issues, the first knee-jerk arguments pit domestic ones against them: "Iraq?" detractors might say: "what about New Orleans?" The notion of dying for strangers meets up quickly with cant about neglecting the needs of our own and "Iraq"--the country, its people, its misery, its sects--may be dismissed from interest altogether.
Then too In the underlying popular organization of foreign affairs issues, there may be this: Americans, as may others, tend first toward the parochial, and then confronted with international issues that affect their lives, disaggregate common themes: for example, if discussing Iraq, Somalia disappears along with Afghanistan, Pakistan, Morocco, Lebanon and other areas working similar conflict issues.
Most arguments over which I've lurked in popular forums tend to bear on the character and courage of the speaker as regards maintaining his position--his personal sense of righteousness--and very little on the sensibility of the position itself: the few who wish to do the scholarship must lurk elsewhere (and I must find them).
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"Balochistan?"--"Never heard of it."
Now, of course, we have--a few of us anyway.
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Our politicians often inflame and polarize constituents and the talk may become insulting and venomous, but in practice and result everyone capable of compromise gets a little something out of the system.
We have problems, for sure, but our emergency rooms take all; we read and view whatever we may wish and speak directly and freely (although I often wish more would speak politely and responsibly more often as well); we choose the level of devotion to and interest in the divine, each individual according to belief and the dictates of conscience; and what fighting we do with our mouths, we follow up with agreement and expedient and practical policy.
We may say we hate each other a lot too, but secretly, we believe in each other and that contributes mightily to peace and security among 301.15 million people.
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Entrenched interests in Pakistan, whether military, old money, clerical, or new radical seem to have quite a different order of challenge, especially as regards insulating the democratic process from the influence of violence: no one speaks freely when someone in the neighborhood keep a gun around expressly to help correct what comes out of their mouths.
Next: the military and the ruling class; lord of the castle, knights of the roundtable, the armies mustered for the divine rule of born royalty: not again, please, but not the dictatorship of the Jihadi either--that's a wrenching polarity for any shopkeeper and a disservice to all who suffer as much with both the challenges posed by economic survival and by impartial nature herself.
Find that more moderate path, oh Pakistan--and be not too hard on President Musharraf: when he could have as easily spent his days out on the golf course, he's lived instead with possibly the most difficult assignments encountered by any political leader on the planet.
2. FRANCE24-EN-DEBATE-PAKISTAN-POLITICS-FOR-PEACE, France24, September 6, 2007.
Correspondence and Permissions: James S. Oppenheim
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