Communicating Arts - Main Web SiteGoogle: Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.
There is one thing all the world's generals, politicians, guerrilla fighters, and terrorists value in equal measure: loyalty.
Loyalty may be a noble thing--indeed, it is on general principles good to be trustworthy, and loyalty is a part of that--but too often, it may also get in the way of good sense and sensibility in the equally noble creation and implementation of responsible public policy in states worldwide.
Violence gets our attention, no doubt, but loyalty in conflicted cultures may be a thing worth examining all by itself.
Aitzaa Ahsan's "Pakistan's Forgotten Man," a paean to Pakistani Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, currently under house arrest by the man who appointed him in the first place, General come President Pervez Musharraf, may provide the way into such a study, but I dare not undertake that today in as small a space as this.
However, feeling a bit locked out elsewhere, I wanted to use my own blog to post a brief response to Aitzaa Ahsan's article, and this is that:
The elephant in the room that no one wants to look at: simple corruption.
Google's robots, unallied and without sentiment, dredge up the old news on every search.
The other elephant in the room, about which discussion may be intimidated, is how a well vocalized disenchantment with the U.S., to put it mildly, affects or represents attitudes about guerrilla movements in the territories.
Where armed conflict exists, what is not said or spoken about may become as important, or more important, than anything discussed.
The thing about loyalty, even to one's own self according to some customs in language, is it wants to overlook what it does not want to examine too closely.
When it comes to those to whom we are loyal, and for various reasons, we accentuate the positive and ditch the negative; we "identify" while ignoring villification from other quarters; we like who we like with not much patience for considering qualities we may not like so much.
In the far more open rumble but far less colorful pageant that is American politics--we have yet to produce a powerful third party, much less half a dozen or more of them--the candidate excoriated in today's news may well turn out tomorrow the popularly elected and much honored leader of the state.
One may hope as much becomes the case for Judge Chaudhry or any other Pakistani candidate who in a democratic system may vie for and win election to local or national power.
However: first, let the press be open and free of intimidation from every quarter; may some next but soon generation achieve near 100 percent literacy and equally irreversible achievement in education; and may attention migrate from personalities (and sentimental loyalties) to the broadest interest in public policy issues and proposed laws and programs.
1. Ahsan, Aitzaz. "Pakistan's Forgotten Man." Teeth Maestro, "for Newsweek, February 11, 2008.
Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim
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