Musharraf and Bush: Conjoined legacies

Mir Adnan Aziz
The Frontier Post

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains: round the decay of that colossal wreck,
Boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away".

This is how Shelley, in his famous sonnet 'Ozymandias', tried cutting the presumptuous ruler down to size. He mocked the 'shattered visage' that lies next to 'two vast and trunkless legs of stone' at his funerary temple.

With President Bush tightening his cinch to ride into the sunset and President Musharraf looking for a worthy steed, what will be left in the wake of their conjoined legacies are the 'shattered visage' of a predominant part of the globe.

Karl Marx once remarked that historical events occur twice, the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce. In crystalline hindsight, both their terms will be seen more as a tragedy than a farce.Their legacies will be one of fear, insecurity, total disregard of the Constitution and impunity for the powerful. They will be cosigned to history as a couple of painfully tragic footnotes and not as the Messiahs they thought they were. Their terms will be seen as a disaster. Claimants of having the Midas touch, everything they touched, turned to dust and ashes.

President Bush, scion of a political family, polarized the world as never before with a phantom war which still rages on unabated. Iraq, Afghanistan, the Middle East and now honing on to Iran, desperately seeking redemption. This all mindless of the fact that it will surely convert the already smoldering region into an uncontrollable inferno.

On the economic front an American recession looms ominously large, if not already there. With a financially disastrous combination of massive military spending hikes and tax cuts, he will bequeath to his unfortunate successor a record national debt, if not more, of a minimum of $9 trillion.

The catchword of making the homeland safe and secure seems all smoke and mirrors after seven years of a 'war on terror'. Today all agree that America and its allies are less safe, their enemies better trained, stronger and more in number. The war's key geographic battleground, the Middle East, is unstable as never before.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, thousands of American soldiers have been killed or wounded. On the other hand millions of Afghani and Iraqi soldiers and civilians have perished or have been maimed for life. More than 150,000 US troops fight to contain an insurgency and a civil war at a cost of over $300 million per day paid by the American taxpayer.

American policies instead of eliminating extremism have fermented the same the world over. In Iran, an Islamic regime remains firmly in power and is defiantly pursuing their rightful nuclear program. The Gaza Strip is now controlled by Hamas with the US backed President Mahmoud Abbas in a quandary.

Hezbullah is increasingly influential in Lebanon and immensely popular on the streets of the Middle East. Syria remains under an anti-American regime allied to Iran. Nonexistent is a real peace process between Israel and any of its neighbours, more so due to the former's almost daily murderous forays into Gaza.

Across the globe, in Pakistan, political power has predominantly remained with the military and those who have managed to align themselves with it. Democratic institutions were not allowed to develop or gain dominance. This has resulted in an extremely polarized society. What we have here is a small governing class and a populace that is largely impoverished and increasingly resentful. This so because they have recurrently seen anything, like the judges, which gave them hope within the system, destroyed.

The recent tumultuous events, though, have raised mass awareness of the all too common and obvious pitfalls of putting too much hope in one person, rather than allowing a simple self regulating system to run a social order of a people.

The previous regime, lacking in everything else, always looked for plaudits for an economic resurgence. That towering citadel in the form of our ' stupendous growth rate' was, what has now been termed a fudged litany. The Government exaggerated the yield of last year's 'bumper crop'. It then compounded the problem by allowing the export of 1.6 million tones of wheat, against a target of just 500,000 tons. The result was a economic windfall for some, and seething frustration for millions of ordinary Pakistanis. What our economic czars actually gave us is an acute shortage of wheat, electricity and gas. Will President Musharraf, always loath to accept a mistake, for once accept the same.

In our increasingly fragmented society there is a consensus that one thing binds us together; societal fear. Fear is a belief. We as a society now have it as an unwanted second self, stalking us all the time, everywhere. On the other hand what President Musharraf is subjecting the West to, like his US counterpart did, is the fear of the alternative. Inept handling has created exaggerated scenarios. To add to the nightmares of an already hallucinating West, we have 'tightened security at our N-facilities', hence accepting the premise that they were at risk.

What we have today is a country totally beholden to America. Being beholden as we are induces a state of servitude that in its extreme instances is outright enslavement and bondage. Enslavement, whether by taking diktats or accepting handouts, is akin to giving up of liberty. Thus have personages historically proffered admonishments against indebtedness of any kind.

For the two term Presidents who enjoyed total parliamentary / congressional control for years, the twosome has abysmally few legislative or national accomplishments. Where true leaders would have seen an opportunity to push a governing agenda, they saw an opportunity to evade parliamentary / congressional oversight as they used their office to pummel dissent and the Constitution.

The most telling aspect of their terms will be remembered as a total destruction of public faith in the possibility of good prudent governance by showing exactly how poorly a government can be run. Both Presidents initially presented themselves as 'enlightened moderates' and later on as 'War Presidents'. Both wrapped themselves in the sacred robes of patriotism, the military and national honor. In doing so both astutely took refuge in the holy of holies, the ultimate 'sanctuary' of patriotism in our lives.

They made criticism of their policies tantamount to being unpatriotic and criticism of the one institution in our lives that is untouchable: the military. War is an incompetent leader's Waterloo — but also his best friend. Being 'war presidents', meant never having to take blame for any debacle.

What is crucial to understand is that the War Myth can be effective even when reality utterly undercuts it. Myths always appeal to transcendental values and shared sacred beliefs. Once we have entered the realm of myth, taboos replace logic and rational discourse. This magic too is finally wearing off. In their desperation to save their legacies both have been forced to squeeze the Myth so hard that its irrationality has become painfully evident.

President Musharraf's rebuke to those retired officers who advised him to resign sounded more like a strangely convoluted and halfhearted attempt to reintroduce the venerable Shakespearean quote: 'Et tu, Brute?'

It would bode well for the country and President Musharraf himself would he, in the wake of his 'friend', walk mercifully away into the twilight.

(miradnanaziz@gmail.com)