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Educating Pakistan

By Niranjan Ramakrishnan

07 November, 2007
Countercurrents.org

My late father, a government official, liked to say half-in-jest that it might be cheaper to pay the bureaucracy to stay home; it would save the country a good deal of money and damage. This is as good a prescription for a Congress now getting ready to confirm Michael Mukasey as Attorney General. His qualification, according to Charles Schumer, one of his Democratic backers, who holds this truth to self-sufficient: Michael Mukasey is not Alberto Gonzales. Well, that is right up there with the proof of fitness proffered by another AG, "I have not been indicted" (Edwin Meese). According to Schumer, Mukasey would bring back confidence and elan to the Justice Department. How? By couching Richard Nixon's "when the president does it, then it is legal" in loftier language? This is rather like saying that Cheney would be an improvement on Bush.

Gonzales was part-goon, part-dufus, revealing an intellectual dimension rivaled only by his master's while also mirroring the latter's other quality -- an ethereal insouciance untethered to any record of competence. Mukasey is not Alberto Gonzales. Ergo, according to Schumer and Feinstein, he is the man for the job. Why, in this country of 300 million and home to a lopsided number of lawyers, we cannot look for someone who will uphold the Constitution unequivocally, is one more mystery of our times.

As happens frequently the larger issue has been crowded out by a smaller one. For all its repugnance, waterboarding is only a symptom of a government serenely contemptuous of the law. What if Mukasey had allowed that waterboarding was torture? Would it change his non-stance on the violation of the FISA? Does he think warrantless wiretapping is illegal? Does he think detention without trial is ok? How about abolition of habeas corpus? What about the War Powers Act?

One would think the Senators would have held him accountable by his answers on all such questions. But how could our politicians, who themselves do not think these questions are vital (or they would be stopping all government business until every one of these usurpations and violations was reversed) think to grill a nominee in this manner? Are they not themselves are busy giving away the store, passing retroactive justification for Bush and Cheney's merry devastations of the law?

One shudders when one reflects that with so many Senators, a disavowal of waterboarding by Mukasey would have clinched their support. It is an indication of how completely apolitical is our political class, which can comprehend nothing but commerce. Politics is about power. Congressional authority has been disemboweled during the Bush term; neither Republicans nor Democrats have even shown resentment, let alone fight.

General Pervez Musharraf, imposing an emergency on Pakistan last week and suspending the constitution, regretted that he had to do so out of necessity, because other branches of government were playing an adversarial role. In the US, per our Constitution, the Congress is designed to act as a check on the executive. Instead, it now views itself as no more than an smooth enabler. Pakistan's protesting opposition has been put under house arrest. Ours is busy colluding with the usurpers.

Give us time, give us time, said Musharraf in his speech, appealing to the West; we are still learning, our democracy is not yet as evolved as yours. Musharraf is right -- Pakistan is still a child in these matters. Clearly his friend and financier in the White House has not let him in on the big secret -- in an 'evolved' democracy, you can get all this power without declaring an emergency!


Niranjan Ramakrishnan is a writer. He can be reached at [email protected].

 

 

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