On NPR Friday, two Men of Washington, deep-voiced and serious withal, delivered themselves of some thoughts about Pakistan. Pakistan, said one, deserved an extra $7.5 billion because, he said, it is a “fledgling democracy.” He never mentioned that Pakistan has always, at best, been a “fledgling democracy,” never quite ready for takeoff from the nest of authoritarian rule by corrupt zamindars, such as Zardari, or generals who, even if they are not quite as fanatically Muslim as the late Zia ul-Haq, are certainly suffused with the attitudes and atmospherics of Islam.
And that first grave man, asked about the policy of the American government continuing to empty its pockets for Pakistan, gravely replied: “What is the option”? By that he meant, of course, “What is the alternative”? But this grave man, you see, misuses words. This misuse, this lack of vigilance with words, this sloppiness and mere approximation in expression, is not a verbal failing alone. It reflects, or bespeaks, a failure of mind, just as the unthinking use of the latest fashionable phrases — “an existential threat,” say — show a kind of inattention that is not only about words, but extends to the way in which people go about fulfilling their responsibilities to think for themselves, to learn for themselves, about Islam or about any other matter that requires attention to detail, to learning for oneself and not relying on staff members for their executive summaries and briefing books.
But when you are a Washington Eminence, and when you have been full of yourself for the past forty years, and when you have been entering rooms where you always quickly look around to see, and to gauge, the usefulness of every person in that room to the promotion of your own career, and when you are unused to the habit of lonely study, and when you long ago became a Famous Figure impressed with your own rectitude because once, long ago, you Spoke Out, and when you are spared from the exigencies of real life because you have or are the beneficiary of those who have hundreds of millions or even a cool billion, then all this may make you disinclined to question the throwing of more money, more of our money — nothing wrong with having the fabulously rich Saudis and other Gulf Arabs doing it — into the hideous mess of Pakistan.
In Pakistan the population is Muslim, almost everyone is Muslim, and the Taliban are merely an example of the impoverished who naturally use Islam as the vehicle for their rage and resentment against those Muslim zamindars and those Muslim generals, all of whom share the same permanent hostility towards Infidels, but some of whom do so in a more obvious way. Others are slyly expert in extracting money and more money and more weapons (and the more advanced that weaponry, the better) from the ever accommodating, endlessly trusting Americans. Even if those Americans now say they are beginning to have their doubts, they need only to talk to that smiling snake Ambassador Husain Haqqani, or attend a reception with his wife, one of the charming Ispahani girls (so very useful for the promotion of Pakistani interests, like other wives of other Muslim leaders), and well then — of course you will solemnly say that in your grave and serious and thoughtful opinion, we simply must spend another $7.5 billion on Pakistan’s “fledgling democracy” because, as you will tell the interviewer, “what is the option”? That you cannot think beyond that, cannot analyze the real nature of Pakistan based on the most important understanding of all, an understanding of Islam, its meaning and menace, means you are unfit to be dealing with matters of foreign policy.
And that is true even if you, a serious and thoughtful man (at least, you think you sound that way) are speaking beside a colleague from the other party, on the same solemn committee, a man who, because he speaks slowly, and with a flat midwestern accent, appears to promise gravity and seriousness that should impress us, the American audience — and who then utters a phrase about how we need to give Pakistan still more money. What is the nature of that intended beneficiary of still more American largesse? It is the government of Pakistan, the one that under Musharraf, and now Zardari, and under any regime that follows, that continues to prevent American agents from interrogating A. Q. Khan to find out where else he may have sold or given Pakistani nuclear technology.
It is the same Pakistani government, with the selfsame I.S.I., that — relying on funds supplied by the American government — promoted the project of that jumped-up metallurgist, A. Q. Khan, who simply stole secrets from the Western laboratories he worked in, and where he was foolishly entrusted with material he should never seen. He then proceeded, on his return to Pakistan, to embark on the nuclear-weapons project pushed by the Pakistani military, and made possible by the money that kept coming in from the Americans. Those Americans for the past sixty years have seen Pakistan — wrongly — as a stout friend, first because “Islam,” as the foolish Dulles brothers maintained, was “a bulwark against Communism,” and second, because those moustachioed ramrod-straight fly-whisking smiling generals with that attractive, trustworthy accent in English, were so much more appealing than Nehru and Krishna Menon, who were seen as dangerously willing to have dealings with the Soviet Union. There were those steel mills, built by the Soviets! Those trade and cultural agreements between India and the Soviet Union! They saw Nehru and Menon as far too nonaligned, too altogether Bandungish, in their orientation.
The government of Pakistan, its generals and zamindars who replace one another, is as deeply Muslim as is the population. And that population’s mental makeup is hidden from view by the likes of Ambassador Husain Haqqani, a smooth man, and his charming wifre, Farahnaz Ispahani. No doubt they can pull the smiling wool over the eyes of such shallow people as the Great Man discussed above, or the other Great Man, the one with the flat Midwestern accent, who uttered an unforgettable phrase about the need to support those who in Pakistan “not only like us, but”¦” “Not only like us”? For someone in power in Washington to use the phrase “like us” about Pakistanis, to say that they could conceivably genuinely “like us” if we lavish more money on them, disturbs, and even frightens. One could conceivably apply to any Pakistani Muslim, rather, a phrase, say, about those who, “for reasons of their own, might temporarily share interests with us” despite the deep-seated hostility that Islam inculcates and Islam prompts.
Pakistan for years promoted the metallurgist A. Q. Khan, as he first stole Western nuclear secrets at laboratories where he worked in the Netherlands and Germany, and then it supported the nuclear project he directed. This project was paid for by money given to the Pakistani military by the American government, the one that for years supported the Taliban in Afghanistan, the one that has pocketed since the attacks of September 2001 more than $30 billion in American aid. Some of that aid, both economic and military, was given openly, with other very large amounts hidden from public scrutiny in the military budget. Still other billions in aid were the result of debt forgivenesss. And now more, and still more, is being suggested be poured into the bottomless pit of Pakistan, a pit made bottomless by the political and economic failure that are a result of Islam itself. No Muslim country will prosper unless it possesses a very large and still active population of non-Muslims (the Chinese and Hindus in Malaysia, the Christians in Lebanon) or unless it has systematically constrained Islam and its deepest believers (Turkey through Kemalism, Tunisia through the one-party rule of Bourguiba and then Ben Ali). For Islam inculcates blind obedience to authority, as long as it is Muslim.
Nevertheless these Grave Men think that another $7.5 billion ought to be transferred from this Infidel land to the Muslim land of Pakistan, because we must, you see, ensure that Pakistan, like Iraq, and like Afghanistan, and like every Muslim country, has a military that is well-armed, so that it can put down the “bad guys” of those “insurgencies.” This is according to our ballyhooed breaker-morants who helped make the “surge work” in Iraq. (How did it work? What did it accomplish that will help American and Infidel interests in the colossal contest with the Camp of Islam? This is never asked. This is never answered.) One of hese is Lt. Col. Kilcullen, seconded from Australia and speaking that Breaker-Morantish or comfortingly anzacish Strine that is so impressive to those looking to hold up for our admiration the “intellectual soldier” who “really understands how to conduct counter-insurgency.” But, when you look more closely, they turn out to be as inattentive to Islam and to the need to weaken the Camp of Islam and Jihad, through allowing — no need to encourage — the pre-existing ethnic, sectarian, and economic fissures within that Camp of Islam to work their magic. When someone — was it General Petraeus or one of his colonels, in the saga told by Thomas Ricks, who crazily concluded that “on average, insurgencies last about ten years”?
He arrived at this with no attention to the facts of Islam, where an “insurgency” of one group of Muslims (say, Sunnis outraged by their loss of power) against Shi”a (determined never again to relinquish power) is not an “insurgency” for Infidels to worry about, just as the collapse of Pakistan should not worry us, as long as we keep our eyes on the only ball — those nuclear weapons — that, in Pakistan, matters.
But what did those Two Grave Speakers, Senators the both of them, know of all this? The more voluble one, the more self-regarding one, asked “what option [sic] do we have” other than sending yet another check, this one for $7.5 billion, to Islamabad, to Zardari, Mr. Ten Per Cent, and to those generals? (Who is now in the role of Musharraf, as the Good General, the General We Can Trust? Is it still Kayani, or is there someone else, an understudy, waiting in the wings? And the other Grave Man, the Other Senator, he of the flat Midwestern voice so redolent of thoughtfulness and rectitute — why, how can we go wrong with two such impressive people? Yet the Other Senator had no inkling that perhaps we should see the Camp of Islam as a place where, instead of rescuing peoples and states from the failures, political and economic and social and intellectual and moral, of Islam itself, we should allow the consequences of Islam to take their course. Among those consequences are despotism, inshallah-fatalism and resulting economic stasis, mistreatment of women and all non-Muslims, hostility to all ideas that are outside of Islam, and encouragement of the habit of mental submission by those who are taught to think of themselves only as “slaves of Allah.” Such slaves are not permitted to engage in the questioning that makes possible moral development, because they simply must accept and never question, the Rules of Islam, the Rules as to What Is Commanded, and What Is Forbidden, because Allah Ta”allah, Allah Knows Best.
Who were these Grave Men of Washington I heard on NPR?
The one who spoke about the “fledgling democracy” in Pakistan — perhaps the wiles and smiles of the Ispahani wife of Husain Haqqani got to him, at a Georgetown dinner — is Senator John Kerry, Democrat, and now the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. And his amiable companion, with the flat Midwestern voice, who agreed with Senator Kerry completely on the need to send another $7.5 billion to Pakistan, so as to ensure that some Pakistanis “like us,” was none other than Senator Richard Lugar, Republican, and former head, when the Republicans held a majority in the Senate, of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
In light of all this, one can only hope that somehow the Well-Prepared will be able to come forward and replace Yesterday”s Men who are still in power all over Official Washington — not least, the evidence suggests, in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
May God Save The United States of America, and May God Save This Honorable Court Of Public Opinion.