On Pakistan, Bhutto, and Boom: The Grand Game, Re-Dux

You know, you can call me a philistine, but I don't care if Pakistan's 'democratic'. Let me say: I don't care if they hold their 'election' next month. I don't care who the nominees are, I don't care how much violence attends the election. I just don't care. Pakistan is gonna be the next Sarajevo, where the inextinguishable spark of world-wide catastrophe is lit. Nothing is gonna change that.

Pakistan is a god-blighted invention of post-War II/Soviet-containment real-politik, beset with anarchic/sectarian rebellion, a fascist dictatorship, and an authoritarian (at best) history. It's been like that for at least 50 of the 60 years of its existence. It was USer officialdom--beginning with Carter, but growing exponentially during the Raygun Reign--which either facilitated or, at least, turned a blind eye to Pakistani nuclear development, because, in the real-politik of the era, a nuclear Pakistan dependent upon the US for maintenance, not unlike Israel 2300 miles to the west, seen as a counterweight to China and Russia in the Central Asian region. It's a nuclear-armed state, 'governed' by a tribalist ontology the only regulation on which is a "western"-styled military. The only practical ofrm of government in Pakistan is a militzry dictatorship.


The kind of democracy that marks the regimes of Central Asia is not one that inspires trust. Pakistan's a "nation-of-convenience," composed and assembled out of fantastically disparate parts, with at LEAST 7 different "national languages." Call me crazy, but I don't think that's a place that should bave been provided with the wherewithal to create and deploy armageddon-style weaponry. You may regard me as a rampant neo-whatsoever, but it occurs to me that any expedient which keeps the militant, fundamentalist, tribal ontology at bay, out of power, and away from the Nukes, is OKAY with me.

Call me paranoid, but I don't trust the ISI (or ANY national "intelligence" service, our own included. It just amazes me to hear 'liberals' defending the CIA.)

On the domestic front, of course, any potentially mortal tensions in Pakistan--or eslewhere, world-wide, for that matter--is good for the Pukes' election prospects, because it contributes to their one and only campaign platform plank: fear, in all its permutations and ramifications. Anything that ramps up fear, that agitates the twitching masses' (un-nameable) anxieties, that amplifies the dread many Murkins feel subliminally from their carefully concealed complicity is "good" for authoritarians.

It is also 'good' for Mrs. C, who is the most authoritarian candidate of the soi-disant opposition Democrats. Additionally, imho, this significantly improves Bill Richardson's chances to become the first Latino/Hispano (read: 'latifundista') elected to national office in the USofA, as the running-mate of whomsoever the eventual Dim nominee turns out to be (likely, to me, still, Mrs. Clenis).