I’ve been keeping up since last spring with the protests of Pakistan’s lawyers after the current dictator General Musharaff attempted to oust Chief Justice Chaudhry who was well known for opposing the government in his rulings. The good General’s latest tactic to hold onto his power over Pakistan was to fire and arrest the entire Pakistan supreme court, then swearing in a new ‘justice’ that is more supportive of the dictatorship. He has fallen short of declaring martial law during an election year only by allowing the Pakistani Parliment to continue operating, but has suspended the Constitution, and deposed the entire supreme court after hearing that they were preparing to inform him that he would not be able to run for President of Pakistan in the current elections.

I can’t help but notice that the U.S. has not done anything save for stalling future weapons negotiations with General Musharaff, which isn’t really much of a statement. Now, I don’t actually support the U.S. meddling and involvement in other sovereign nation’s issues, but considering how frequently we claim to be on the side of democracy and justice when it suits us, how apt it seems that we are supporting a dictatorship over democracy just by non-action! For all of our postering about freedom for Afghanistan, and we leave them in worse shape than when we left… in the hands of warlords just as bad as the Taliban, but supportive of a pipeline to assist us in our oil acquisitions.

I suppose it is expected that we would not have an official opinion about Musharaff’s doings, but if our government does not have a position on this, how unlikely would it be for the same sort of thing to happen here in our own country?

What is really interesting is that General Musharaff came into power during a 1999 coup under the auspice of ‘national emergency’ … and maintains his power for the same assumptions. How different is this ally against the axis of evil from our own leadership? How many similarities can be found in Musharaff’s suspension of Pakistan’s constitution and our own leadership’s removal of our own rights within our own constitution, considered by our president to be just a ‘Goddamned piece of paper’?

Sister liberty keeps odd bedfellows.