Watching Sidney Lumet's Before the Devil Knows you're Dead yesterday (an entertaining watch, btw, though a tad overdone, especially in the acting department), I found myself thinking about how thin the line between tragedy and comedy really is - how both are constructed out of the grotesque and the unlikely, how both rely on irony and paradox and how both are, often, just a matter of timing. All our pathos carries within in it the seeds of the ridiculous and evil is frequently nothing more than human silliness run amok. Can you imagine anything more cartoonish than Hitler, or, in retrospect, more chilling? Is a mass-murderer anything more than a buffoon with power?
Watching the US bend over backwards to justify their continuing support of a military dictatorship, even after Musharraf's Emergency, I find myself repeating a phrase that comes up much too often now: "It would be hilarious, if it weren't so fucking sad."
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6 comments:
I've no quarrel with the "tragicomedy" part, but I suspect a Pakistan without a military dictator might be more dangerous than a Pakistan with one...
cat: Maybe, maybe not. But surely that's true of the greater part of the world, not just of Pakistan? Follow that logic to its conclusion and the US should simply install puppet dictators all through the Middle East and Africa, stop claiming that they're for democracy, and call this what it really is - imperialism. It's the hypocrisy of claiming to champion democracy that's the issue here.
Falstaff, I just don't think hypocrisy should be an issue here at all. In international politics, every case is different, so the search for a general principle is doomed, and every actor lays itself open to the charge of hypocrisy. The alternative is not to act at all, and I'd argue that this is even worse. After all, the fellowship of human beings is more fundamental than the fellowship of nationals.
I suppose you're concerned with the possibility that a general lack of principle could lead to action without justification. Or, rather, to spurious justifications. But I don't think a lack of principles implies an inability to make value judgments. These judgments are more contingent, more fluid, but not any the less valid.
In the case of Pakistan, what's being debated here is whether the U.S. should interfere in the internal affairs of Pakistan. Musharraf might be supported by the U.S., but he's certainly not a "puppet dictator", he predates 9/11. There is so much more of a case for intervention in Myanmar than in Pakistan, and I suspect that people are not as emotionally invested in the former case just because China and India are the nations principally at fault, rather than the U.S.
cat: I'm not sure what you mean by every actor lays itself open to charges of hypocrisy. My point is simply that the US claim about caring for democracy as a principle, or about caring for the rights and / or welfare of the Pakistani people (or for that matter the "fellowship of human beings") is a bad joke. US policy is driven entirely by the interests of US citizens (I would argue by the interests of Bush & Cheney alone, but let it go) and the least they could do is have the courage to admit that, instead of pretending to champion democracy when it suits their interests and continuing to support / partner with dictators when that serves them better. Should the US interfere in Pakistan, or in Myanmar? I would say no. But I would also say that they have no business being in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Part of this, I suspect is that I don't agree with your assertion that Pakistan without a military dictator is worse than Pakistan with one (more dangerous for whom?), but that's a pointless discussion that I'm trying not to get into.
National policy is driven by national interests, but that is not surprising, and does not apply only to the U.S. I think the real issue here is residual anger at the U.S. bungling in Iraq and Afghanistan, and yes, they do deserve the opprobrium. A deadly mixture of irresponsibility and incompetence. At least it hasn't spread elsewhere yet.
But it seems as if you'd condemn them whether they interfered in the Pakistani troubles or not, so it seems rather an irrelevant case...
cat: Yes, but therefore why pretend, as the US does, that you're motivated by things like freedom and democracy - hence 'hypocrisy'.
I think you're partially right about Iraq and Afghanistan - it's not so much residual anger as the assumption that 'interference' from the US will consist of ill-conceived and incompetent military aggression - in other words the assumption that US intervention will only make things worse. When I say I don't think the US should interfere, that's the kind of interference I'm thinking of.
The other implicit issue, of course, is whether they're currently interfering in Pakistan's internal politics or not. I don't know enough about the situation in Pakistan to have a point of view on how US support and funding to the Musharraf government effects the political outcome there, but one could argue that the US is already interfering in Pakistan - only on the side of the dictatorship.
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