The raw power grab in Pakistan, in which General
Pervez Musharraf has imposed a state of emergency, suspended
the Supreme Court and the provincial courts, and silenced
private-owned media, tells us far more about the United States
than Pakistan.
To be sure, Musharraf is behaving like a caricature
of a third world petty dictator, direct from central casting,
with the rounding up of thousands of people and the beating
of lawyers in the streets by police. He is using the war
on terror as a pretext for the suspension of the rule of law
and a war on civil society and progressives in that country.
How unfortunate it is that so many leaders abuse their power
and suppress their own citizens, particularly in the developing
world, where already there is so much deprivation and despair.
But from whom is the General taking his cues?
Pakistani citizens are paying the price for
the misguided policies of Washington decision makers. The
U.S. government stands idly by because it does not want to
offend one of its primary allies in this war on terror, viewed
by many as a war on civil liberties here at home and a war
on international human rights law and the Muslim world. Besides,
America, or rather, Bush & Co., the inventor of the preventive
war doctrine, believes in cracking down, starting wars and
stripping rights, based on what they think people might
do in the future. War is perpetual, and constitutional guarantees
stand in the way of this war, in their view. I will discuss
this doctrine at greater length in an upcoming commentary,
in which I will review the new book by David Cole and Jules
Lobel, Less
Safe, Less Free: Why America Is Losing the War on Terror.
America cannot lecture Musharraf
about democracy because the current occupants of the White
House do not believe in democracy. And various U.S. administrations
have stifled democracy movements abroad (and here at home),
assassinated their leaders, and selected and installed their
replacements. But that does not stand in their way when they
want to decide who is a brutal dictator and who is not.
So, which governments are dictatorial? Cuba?
Cuba is deemed a dictatorship because it is a small island
nation with a leader who, for decades, has defied the behemoth
90 miles to the north. Is China a dictatorship in the eyes
of America? No, because although it represses its people
and sells lead toys for profit, China owns America’s debt
and there is too much money at stake. Burma is owned and
operated by a brutal, insular, and ignorant military junta
that will summarily round up and kill thousands of pro-democracy
protestors in order to maintain power. But we can’t make
too much of a fuss about it, because oil companies such as
Chevron (who once named an oil tanker after Condoleezza Rice)
are doing business there and need to get paid.
And Iran, of course, is a terrorist state because
Bush the Decider says so. The U.S. once eliminated a democratic
government in Iran by staging a coup, overthrowing Prime Minister
Mossadegh and installing a puppet regime under the Shah.
Not surprisingly, it was all about the oil, as Mossadegh’s
government voted to nationalize Iran’s petroleum industry.
Backlash against the Shah’s autocratic rule led to the Iranian
Revolution, and the rest is history. Sometimes, it is difficult
to distinguish the terrorists and the dictatorships from the
democracies.
As Musharraf consolidates his power, unconstitutionally,
in the name of fighting terrorism, so too, does his patron,
Bush. The two men are cut from the same cloth. And neither
can hold onto power forever.
BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member David A. Love, JD is a lawyer and prisoners’ rights advocate
based in Philadelphia, and a contributor to the Progressive
Media Project, McClatchy-Tribune
News Service and In These Times.
He contributed to the book, States
of Confinement: Policing, Detention, and Prisons
(St. Martin's Press, 2000). Love is a former Amnesty International
UK spokesperson, organized the first national police brutality
conference as a staff member with the Center for Constitutional
Rights, and served as a law clerk to two Black federal judges.
His blog is davidalove.com.
Click
here to contact Mr. Love.