by Jim Miles

The Duel – Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power Tariq Ali. Scribner (Simon & Schuster Inc.) New York, 2008

Pakistan is becoming more and more important in the news media (excepting the current scares with the financial markets) and its interactions with the Taliban are becoming more prominently known. Predator drones have been used more frequently in the Northwest Frontier Provinces and the almost semi-autonomous Federally Administered Tribal Areas, both consisting mainly of the Pashtun, a people divided by the artificial and not fully recognized Durrand Line that forms the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. These same people compose a significant per centage of the military forces in Pakistan.

What is not true is that these areas are fully in the Taliban camp, and recent and historical electoral votes indicate a strong secular sentiment with the voters (recognizing within that secularity that Pakistan is officially a Muslim state). An unauthorized U.S. led military assault on September third into South Waziristan killed twenty civilians When reports come in later about both the Taliban and the Pakistan military forces firing warning shots at American helicopters heading towards Pakistani territory, the reality of future possibilities should the U.S. continue its incursions into Pakistani territory become quite frightening.

Pakistan is nominally an independent and democratic state, although it has had a ‘civilian’ government for only fifteen of its sixty years, the other years served under military dictatorship. When ‘democracy’ reins, it is rife with clan disputes, cronyism, bribery, fraud, and U.S. influence. When the military reins, the same holds true, and in spite of U.S. rhetoric about global freedom and democracy, they have never hesitated to support any client Pakistani regime. As reported by Tariq Ali in his clearly written new work, “The Duel”, “U.S. priorities determined Pakistan’s domestic and foreign policies from 1951 onward.”

The current situation is no different other than that the military situation is increasingly tense as the Bush government has publicly identified Pakistan as being in the centre of the fight against terror and promises to support their independence and sovereignty. Given the history of U.S. interventions globally and in its manipulations in relationship to Pakistan in particular, this rhetoric is both disingenuous and frightening. Emphasizing that the world’s sixth most populous state and a nuclear state is “not on the verge of a jihadi takeover,” Ali acknowledges the possibility of a self-fulfilling prophecy if the U.S. tries to “occupy parts of Pakistan, destroy its nuclear facilities, and impose a puppet regime. The hell that is Iraq would rapidly shift eastward. Definitely not recommended.”

Ali argues, “the only way a jihadi group could penetrate the nuclear facilities would be if the army wanted them to.” That would only happen if the army would “rupture” as a result of occupation and bombing by U.S. forces. In a more recent interview since the writing of the book, Ali reiterated the same idea, “Pakistan is much larger country than Afghanistan, it is a country of 200 million strong with nuclear weapons, so it’s foolish to try to destabilize this country.”[1]

In “The Duel” Ali provides the history that leads up to this current crisis. The actual duel is described as one “between a U.S. backed politico-military elite and the citizens of the country” a duel shaped by the formation of the state itself and the relationships between India, China, Russia and the U.S.’ perception of its strategic needs. The most important aspect of the duel “is not the highly publicized conflict in Waziristan, but the divide between the majority of the people and their corrupt, uncaring rulers.” It is a duel in which “The people cannot be blamed for the tragedies that have afflicted the country.” While that is true of just about any national history as ‘the people’ simply want to get on with their lives, in Pakistan it presents a particularly tragic and morbid picture of what occurs when imperial strategies (British, Russian, U.S. or any other) ride roughshod over any group of national people. That Pakistan was founded as an Islamic state (identified by Ali as possibly an unintended outcome of negotiations on the British withdrawal from India) and covers an area inhabited by several national groups with the Punjabi military and bureaucratic dominance as the strongest focus, instability is not surprising.

Accordingly, as “there is no serious political alternative to military rule…The outlook is bleak.” The main issues in Pakistan are not (or were not until recently) the Taliban and the war but social and economic inequality. The solutions for a successful Pakistan have commonalities globally.

First and most obvious for the Pakistanis would be the withdrawal of NATO forces n Afghanistan, and even more so, from all Middle east territories, as the “recent Islamist movements with their extremist factions is a modern phenomenon….It’s a phase that will whither away…if the military occupations of Muslim lands are ended.” As has been proven in Iraq and other areas of the world, the strongest recruiter for any military insurgency is occupation and attacks on civilians.

Along with the disencumberment of the military serious social and economic changes would be required: land reform, military power controlled, the globalization rules of the IMF need to be altered, the social infrastructure, in particular education, health, and affordable housing, needs to be reformed, and the legal system needs it independence as does the media.

“The Duel” is a strongly written, well argued, and readily accessible work. Ali is quite clear in his opinions and supports them well with the history of intrigues and manipulations that have kept the military and political bureaucracy in place over millions of citizens, half of whom live in poverty. The United States has been alongside the power groups all the way, always looking for a compliant regime for whatever label to further its foreign policy and strategic interests.

For both the interested citizen and the concerned politician, “The Duel” will go a long way towards providing information for a country that has until recently been only on the sidelines with the current war on terror. The members of governments of the ‘western’ world, who openly professed ignorance of Afghanistan, tend to be quite ignorant of much of what has taken place in the Middle East and South Asia. Tariq Ali provides a history and social-political perspective that should be known before more aggressive moves are made in spreading the war on terror into this complex and dynamic country.

[1] Wajahat Ali, “Dueling Partners: Pakistan and the U.S.” October 3, 2008.

http://www.counterpunch.org/waj10032008.html

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Jim Miles is a Canadian educator and a regular contributor/columnist of opinion pieces and book reviews for The Palestine Chronicle. Miles’ work is also presented globally through other alternative websites and news publications.

REVIEW #2

Wall Street – America’s Dream Palace Steve Fraser. Yale University Press, New Haven. 2008.

With the United States bailout package now through Congress, but still waiting for Monday morning’s financial signals from around the world, Steve Fraser’s extended essay Wall Street – America’s Dream Palace provided an interesting diversion from the many possible realities that may yet arise. It is a diversion in that it is not a technical book, no need to worry about understanding economic jargon, or even the economy; nor is it a truly historical work although it recounts anecdotes and information that do cover the time span of the stock exchange in New York. Instead it is somewhat of a sociological review (but again without the jargon normally associated with academic sociologists), a social commentary, an examination of the mythology of the market. It could also be considered an extended metaphor for the manner in which the United States has treated its own citizens and as well as citizens of other countries.

It is a book, also, that is written out of time. For all the descriptions provided, stories told, and questions posed for reader’s consideration, it was published before the current disaster unfolding on Wall Street at this moment. Steve Fraser does not put the later part of the story into its current context. There is no recognition of the potential for near future catastrophe that could have been gleaned from being more aware of the huge debt crisis within the United States ranging from personal debt, through financial debt, to the large public or government debt. There is no sector of the economy that is not affected by this huge debt load, and for Fraser to have missed it – or to have ignored it – indicates that he either did not want to consider it, or that he was not aware of it, even though as early as two or three years ago the alternate media were indicating that the United States carried a huge debt load in all areas that made the country very insecure in its global as well as its domestic finances.

Had this book been set to be published sometime this month, Fraser would have to significantly alter his last statement wondering “Whether Americans will continue …to find in Wall Street a welcoming place to indulge their romance with risk and dreams of universal abundance remains to be seen.” There are two sides to this statement – one can be certain that for the average citizen of the United States it is no longer a welcoming place, but raised in a society that values consumerism and monetary greed above all else, the romance and risk will certainly return some day. Today however, the romance and idealistic mythology of the self-made man cleverly manipulating his way to millions has been tossed over by the almost complete anger of the public telling Congress not to bail out the risk takers by using their tax dollars. But Congress did anyway. That part of the mythology remains untarnished, exposing once again the “political corruption and crony capitalism” that extends back to the 1860s if not further.

The book is divided into four shorter essays, each describing an aspect of the mythology, with the same names occurring in all four essays. The first essay deals with “The Aristocrat”, the noveau riche of the new country, where there was a “conflation of capitalist with aristocrat”, a recognition of the “inequalities and exploitation”, and “lack of social conscious” of the group (as compared to the ‘noblesse oblige’ of the landed hereditary aristocracy). This era lasted through the great railway building era and the era of industrialization that saw the corporate magnates using the army and hired private guards to put down strikes (some things really do not change).

“The Confidence Man” looks at the “orgy of speculation” and its accompanying “crisis of confidence” in the markets, with its “allure of wealth…and depravity and risk” that created “celebrity crooks.” There was a “mordant fascination with an emerging commercial civilization that seemed fraudulent to the core.” The era of the Robber Barons, the great railroad developments seemed “primordial…grandiloquent, folksy…cartoonish…with a touch of evil,” arising from “eminent men” with “tawdry schemes.” Here arises one of the author’s concepts of the “complicity of the victims” who accepted the “flim flam and airborne enthusiasm” of the promoters, giving them a “willing suspension of disbelief.” It is here that Fraser introduces the idea that after Enron there was no great shake-up but rather a “muted response…especially given the scale of the abuses.”

Fraser’s section on “The Hero” focuses on J. P. Morgan whom he credits with essentially saving the country from financial disaster in the late 1800s by restructuring the railroads, arranging the first era of corporate conglomerates, and in 1907 rescuing a collapsed trust company that endangered the whole system. Recognized within this essay is the shift from an economy that actually produced manufactured goods to one a hundred years later where “Wall Street is at the center of a decaying productive apparatus” that “concealed an underlying stagnation” and instead “relied on the heady vapours given off by the financial services sector.” So there is some recognition on the author’s part that somehow the current financial situation is not on a solid foundation, but he in no way expresses any insight into what that could lead to. Perhaps he had no intention to do so, but in consideration of current events, it becomes a weakness to his mythology.

This leads finally to “The Immoralist”, the recognition of “unearned wealth…leached” from the consumer. The street, “like a parasite it leeched away real wealth that originated elsewhere,” and accompanied by the recognition that “the stupendous wealth, which presumably embodied scientific, technical, and organizational progress, was also responsible for poverty, with its calamitous social chaos and moral decline.”

The author returns to the complicity of the victim, an idea that needs to be challenged by current events. There is no sector of the economy that is not affected by the various levels of debt in the United States. Much of this is consumer greed, stimulated by the advertising propaganda of the multinational corporations. Yet with the media firmly in the pockets of the corporations themselves, the citizen is daily bombarded with images and messages of consumerism, the most ludicrous one at the moment being the various financial advisor groups trying to convince everyone that things will turn around in a year or two – which for the corporations perhaps they will if they can get their hands on enough of the taxpayers dollars.

Goaded by propaganda, with pension funds put into mutual funds, with trillions of dollars of mortgage debt put into such arcane debt funds that even the economists neither truly understand them nor are able to explain them to others, the citizen has little room to manoeuvre. Even local savings account, once the safe conservative method of accumulating financial backing for local manufacturing businesses and safe conventional mortgages, are now a forbidding terrain within the overall debt collapse. Fraser stopped his essays one item short of the reality of today.

But more, these are essays generally out of context, out of place, out of time. As a mythology of the market, of Wall Street, the essays serve as an entertaining read of the sociology and mythology surrounding the markets, but they do not advocate or propose ideas that extend ones thinking beyond that. At the end of it all, it is in its own way a “hurrah” for the United States entrepreneurial spirit which ranges from the imagined greatness of the risk taker and empire builder to the darker malignant side of the confidence man and con artist, perhaps evil but still secretly admired for bucking the system – at least until one has to go to the pawnshop in order to get money for the next meal on the table.
*****

Jim Miles is a Canadian educator and a regular contributor/columnist of opinion pieces and book reviews for The Palestine Chronicle. Miles’ work is also presented globally through other alternative websites and news publications.