General Musharraf was a smooth-talking dictator, but no more than that. He instituted military rule in an illegal coup and continued to govern in the interests of himself and a narrow elite, continually rolling back surviving vestiges of the rule of law in Pakistan. Under his rule Pakistan stagnated and the economic gap to neighbouring India grew so large as to be insurmountable for at least a generation. Dictatorship does not fight extremism, it promotes extremism in desperate and repressed opponents with no legitimate outlet for opposition.
It says volumes for where our far right New Labour government now stands on world affairs that they regret the political demise of this odious dictator. Here is David Miliband, the neo-con muppet who is New Labour’s hope for political revival:
“The Musharraf years yielded significant dividends… It is important to highlight President Musharraf’s commitment to tackle terrorism, to promote dialogue with India, especially over Kashmir, and to root out corruption,” he said.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/18/pakistan
Yeah, right. Come to think of it, why don’t we have military dictators all over the developing world? Plainly Miliband holds that these dusky foreigners need the smack of firm government. Why Miliband believes that rooting out corruption is a good thing, while his own government pro-actively harbours and protects it in the BAE scandal, is beyond me.
Miliband is no more than a foolish, shallow little disgrace. Despite New Labour’s best efforts, this is still in many ways a lovely country. It is both astonishing and appalling that it should be represented by someone as insubstantive as Miliband.
Craig,
You're right about Milibrand, unfortunately. Britain is still a lovely country, but it's getting uglier. The place we grew up in is evolving into something far darker and more sinister. The BAE scandal is a form of crime that's simply too hot too handel. Those involved too powerful to touch. Corruption at this level is hard too define merely as a crime. It's something else, something more troublig. The case is a sort of window into how the "deep state" really functions.
And one can contrast the deep state with the superficial nature of politicians like Miliband. They actually don't need to be particularly knowlegdable or intelligent to occupy their positions, because those qualities don't matter any more. We have moved beyond all that.
Politics is being replaced by personalities. These people don't have to be competent, in fact this probably disqualifies them from holding office. As politics is becoming irrelevant and it's dismantled, the state is changing into something else too. Much of the classic "bourgeois" concept of the states role is under attack, especially in the United States.
It's as if those people who critize the Bush regime's incompetence don't really understand what's happening. Bush, Cheney, Rumfeld and there like are NOT INCOMPETENT. What they are doing is dismantling the structure of the state that's been accepted for a couple of centuries. The state is being privatized and merging with commerce, one could call it the commercial state, some would say it's a new form of corporate state, or even Facism.
I believe Gerald James was absolutely right in his address at Conference of the Environmental Law Centre when he stated, 'It has also been clearly demonstrated that Parliament has no control of knowledge of events and that a vast apparatus of permanent unelected Government exists. This permanent Government consists of senior civil servants, intelligence and security officers, key figures in certain city and financial institutions (including Lloyds of London), key industrialists and directors of major monopolistic companies, senior politicians. The Lord Chancellors Office which is responsible for the appointment of Judges, Clerks of the House of Commons select Committees and approval of Chairmen of such committees and the approval of the Queen's Counsel, holds a total control of the legal administrative framework and has strong connections to the security and intelligence services.
Better still, the UK Ambassador to Pakistan, Sir Mark Lyall Grant, has reportedly been pushing for Musharraf to be granted immunity from prosecution for his many abuses of power:
https://publish.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/08/40722…