Baithak

On the eve of our national election, we realize that one challenging issue facing the next president is how to address terrorism and the options for counterterrorism. As psychological research has made clear, what he and his administration say about these issues will influence how the public thinks about them—and will affect our national and international policy. [For more on the power of words, see “When Words Decide,” by Barry Schwartz; Scientific American Mind, August/September 2007.]

Since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001, the Bush administration has used a battle metaphor: the “global war on terrorism” and the “war on terror.” Such descriptive terms simplify complex realities, making them more mentally manageable. But they do not adequately represent the complexities of the problem, resulting in selective perception of the facts, and they may reflect the views of only a few key policy makers. Nevertheless, they can guide national decision making. The wars that began in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 clearly demonstrate that the concept of a war to combat a method of violence used by nonstate agents is more than rhetoric.

• Since the attacks on September 11, 2001, the Bush administration has used a war metaphor to define counterterrorism strategy. Such a description may simplify a complex reality, making it more mentally manageable, but it may also oversimplify and distort reality.
• Metaphors can guide national decision making. The wars that began in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 clearly demonstrate that the concept of a war to combat a method of violence used by nonstate agents is more than rhetoric.
• Viewing counterterrorism through the lens of law enforcement may yield more tightly focused tactics that are less costly than war and less likely to provoke resentment and backlash.
• Relating counterterrorism to disease containment or prejudice reduction shifts the focus to the psychological underpinnings of terrorism and, in doing so, may suggest successful long-term strategies that chip away at the motivations of terrorists.

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A parallel new Bush doctrine is emerging, in the last days of the soon-to-be-ancient regime, and it needs to be strangled in its crib. Like the original Bush doctrine — the one that Sarah Palin couldn’t name, which called for preventive military action against emerging threats — this one also casts international law aside by insisting that the United States has an inherent right to cross international borders in “hot pursuit” of anyone it doesn’t like.

They’re already applying it to Pakistan, and this week Syria was the target. Is Iran next?

Let’s take Pakistan first. Though a nominal ally, Pakistan has been the subject of at least nineteen aerial attacks by CIA-controlled drone aircraft, killing scores of Pakistanis and some Afghans in tribal areas controlled by pro-Taliban forces. The New York Times listed, and mapped, all 19 such attacks in a recent piece describing Predator attacks across the Afghan border, all since August. The Timesnotes that inside the government, the U.S. Special Operations command and other advocates are pushing for a more aggressive use of such units, including efforts to kidnap and interrogate suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders. Though President Bush signed an order in July allowing U.S. commando teams to move into Pakistan itself, with or without Islamabad’s permission, such raids have occurred only once, on September 3….

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Sometimes Ayaz Amir (thinks) runs so far ahead of his thoughts he ends up losing the race to reason. Make it Reason for added emphasis. In this excerpt he praises the people of Pakistan and their sanguine intelligence. If …

If the people made the right decision in 1947, one may wonder why they forgot the lesson in 1970 and repeated their mistake? Or repeat it again in 2008?

If the people are fickle (in that they do not learn from their past mistakes), why must he blame the leadership for failing the nation? And let us not forget, as a opinion maker (of sorts) he comes under the umbrella of leader too.

Ayaz Amir saheb, it is the people’s fault!… (fool me once, shame on you, fool me again, shame on me)

As for Ali Ahmed Kurd, congradulations on his election victory. and with prayers (caveat: my prayers are like the prayers of millions of other pakistanis about Kashmir) that he may succeed where Aitezaz Ahsan failed.

It may sound like a tall claim to make but the people of Pakistan have never failed their country. Time and again they have showed that they are capable of the right decisions: whether in 1947, 1970 or, as most recently, in 2008. They are not to be blamed if time and again it’s the leadership which has failed the nation.

We are witnessing the same phenomenon again. The people voted for change on Feb 18. They voted for Musharraf’s ouster, the restoration of the Musharraf-purged judiciary and an end to Pakistan’s clammy embrace of American policy. They certainly did not vote for Pakistan’s return to the IMF. If the people of Pakistan have been disappointed, if their expectations have not been met, if they present the spectacle of a demoralised nation, it is not because their judgement on Feb 18 was wrong but because it is no one’s fault except perhaps of our stars that we have a governing elite about whose blazing incompetence nothing more needs to be proven, so self-evident a truth is this now taken to be.

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In a clever and unique endeavour, the Tehrik-e-Niswan has adapted Samuel Beckett’s timeless tragicomedy, Waiting For Godot, into Urdu. The play, which will hit the stage from October 31 (today) at the Arts Council, has not only been translated, but has also been laced with local socio-political humour - that too to great effect.

The play, titled ‘Insha Ka Intazar’, is written and directed by Anwer Jafri and has been modified to some extent in that it will be performed in one act as opposed to the two in Beckett’s original, and that the male duo of Estragon and Vladimir are replaced by a male-female combo of Karmu and Zulekha.

However, the purists can rest assured that the cleverness, nuances, and subtleties of the play remain intact despite the drastic effect of a linguistic change from English to Urdu. The poignancy of the thrust (which Beckett always maintained was for the audience to decipher using their own perception) is not only sustained but, in fact, is emphasised bearing in mind that the local audience will be able to relate to it more given its smartly-incorporated domestic flavour.

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By Baithak.Net

Mick Imlah is the bookies’ favourite to add the TS Eliot prize for poetry to the Forward prize he won earlier this month, after his first collection for 20 years made the shortlist for Britain’s richest poetry award. If he were to fulfil Ladbrokes’s prediction, he would be only the second poet to pull off this “double” and win both of Britain’s top poetry awards, following Sean O’Brien’s sweep with The Drowned Book last year.

The shortlist in full is:

Moniza Alvi for Europa
Peter Bennet for The Glass Swarm
Ciaran Carson for For All We Know
Robert Crawford for Full Volume
Maura Dooley for Life Under Water
Mark Doty for Theories and Apparitions
Jen Hadfield for Nigh-No-Place
Mick Imlah for The Lost Leader
Glyn Maxwell for Hide Now
Stephen Romer for Yellow Studio

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Neo-conservatives and hawks within the Bush administration have long clamored for expanding Middle Eastern conflicts into Syria, which was named as one of the three countries in Bush’s famous “axis of evil”.

Indeed, Bush’s neo-conservative deputy national security adviser, Elliott Abrams, told Israeli officials during a high-level meeting that the US would not object if Israel extended its 2006 war with Hezbollah in Lebanon into Syria.

But if the cross-border attack was an attempt by hawks to lure Syria into a war, it appears to have failed; Syria has engaged in a measured response, although it did call the act of aggression “a dangerous violation of the Syrian sovereignty and the UN principles and conventions”, in its letter to the UN.

Syria’s press attache in London, Jihad Makdissi, told the British Broadcasting Corporation that the US should have approach Syria first.

“If they have any proof of any insurgency, instead of applying the law of the jungle and penetrating, unprovoked, a sovereign country, they should come to the Syrians first and share this information,” he said.

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