British Justice Lives On...
...in the former empire, although its wheels do grind rather slowly:
Pakistan to Pursue a Treason Case for Musharraf
Pakistan to Pursue a Treason Case for Musharraf
"Pakistan’s government said Sunday that it was initiating a treason prosecution of the country’s former ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, in what would be a groundbreaking if politically charged assertion of civilian supremacy over the powerful Pakistani military."[---]
"Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said that the government had asked the Supreme Court to establish a special panel to try General Musharraf on accusations that he subverted the Constitution in late 2007 when he imposed emergency rule and fired much of the judiciary.Another one on the turmoil in Pakistan: Rift Within Pakistan Taliban Grows
The military has ruled Pakistan for about half of the country’s 66-year history, and no ruler or top military commander had ever faced criminal prosecution until General Musharraf’s return from exile in April. Since then, he has faced criminal prosecution in four cases related to his time in power.
But a treason prosecution would sharply raise the stakes between civilian and military leaders — the charge carries a potential death penalty — and, analysts warned on Sunday, could cast the country into new political turmoil."
"A deadly rift within Pakistan's Taliban network has deepened since a U.S. drone strike killed the group's chief this month, militants and officials said, with the late leader's hard-line wing challenged by commanders interested in pursuing peace negotiations with the government.[---]
In recent weeks, members of these two factions of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan have been killing each other, both in TTP's main stronghold of North Waziristan on the Afghan border, and in the southern metropolis of Karachi, where vast urban neighborhoods are under effective Taliban control.The Shawal valley in Waziristan, in particular, has become a flashpoint."
"The charismatic leadership of Hakimullah Mehsud had kept the organization together, and Mullah Fazlullah doesn't have that," said Syed Hussain Shaheed Soherwordi, an international terrorism specialist at the University of Peshawar. "This is the first time that a certain difference of opinion has been expressed. When the leadership of a terrorist organization is contested by some of its members, that's the moment when there will be some cracks within the organization."Another indication that the Taliban is falling apart.
posted by Louise at 6:01 pm
5 Comments:
Lucky indeed were those benighted folks, mostly stone age or not a helluva lot later, who were colonized by Britain, which brought Western Civilization, the Christian religion, the Enlightenment, the Rule of Law, Parliamentary Government, to folks lacking all of that.
Consequently, I don't buy all the attempted guilt-tripping of Indians, so-called "first nations", that'd be still living in tepees, wearing animal skins and living off migratory buffalo were it not for the arrival of Anglo Civilization.
One of my favorite stories from the British colonization/civilization of India is this: In the early 19th century, a new British Colonial District Commissioner was out on his first inspection tour of his district. A local Indian notable had died and his body was about to be burned on a funeral pyre. Next to the pyre was a live young woman, drugged, tied up and about to be cast onto the pyre with her dead husband.
The shocked British officer asked his Indian subordinate what the hell was going on. The Indian then explained, "We have a custom called suttee, of burning the wives of dead notables, along with the corpse of their husband."
The outraged British Officer replied, "We have a custom in Britain of calling such an act murder and hanging chaps that commit murder." It did take a few hangings but the custom of suttee was ended.
This is not the time to let up! It's taken 12 years since 9/11 to get the Taliban on the ropes, with the bastards turning on each other. More drone attacks, please! Have all those bastards looking over their shoulders 24X7!
This proves the efficacy of the US Grant/WT Sherman/GS Patton approach to crushing an enemy threat, which also worked very well in the American Civil War: When you kill enough of them, they will quit. Don't go halfway to that point and stop.
(That's the Lyndon Johnson way of fighting a war and it doesn't work. Johnson was a bad President and an even worse Commander in Chief, due primarily to his Texas-sized ego and inability to admit mistakes. Nixon, by contrast, was not ego-maniacal, set policy and let competent military professionals run the war. The US had essentially won the war when our last ground forces left. It was then the Democratic Party controlling Congress who back-stabbed the South Vietnamese Government by denying them promised supplies and back-up when the North Vietnamese broke the Peace Treaty and invaded South Vietnam with the regular North Vietnamese Army. Naturally, the Democrats' lickspittle MSM have kept this treachery away from the eyes and ears of the American people. There is much innocent Vietnamese blood on their hands.)
At the end of WW1, US General John J Pershing, Commander in Chief of the American Armies in France, was absolutely opposed to giving the Germans an Armistice. He felt that by 1918, the Allies, at enormous cost in 1916-17, had finally gotten the Germans out of the trenches and in hot retreat across France. He had the American troops in combat literally to the last hour of the war, with thousands of American dead on the last day, the last hours. Thousands of Americans died on that last day, those last hours. An unapologetic Pershing was called before a Congressional Committee to testify after the war. Pershing had wanted to refuse an Armistice and to follow up with a 1919 Spring Offensive by all the Allied Armies into Germany, crush the German Army on German soil, in front of the German people, and compel an unconditional surrender.
His reasoning was that by allowing the Germans an Armistice and allowing the German Army to remain under arms and simply march out of France, "...a mythology will arise in Germany that 'we weren't really defeated' and in ten or twenty years, we're all going to have to come back and go through this all over again."
History proved General Pershing right and that by not following the US Grant/WT Sherman/GS Patton-Pershing approach of undeniably crushing the enemy, we indirectly, to a degree, encouraged the Germans for Round Two.
At least, by the end of World War Two, with Germany in ruins from Allied bombing, this time with all of Germany under the boot of victorious Allied Armies, the German people were under no doubt whatsoever that they'd been thoroughly, absolutely defeated. The only thing the Allies did in insufficient measure, IMO, was that we hanged far too few of the leadership at Nuremberg after the war trials.
(Albert Speer was a perfect example. As Hitler's Minister of Armaments, he was personally responsible for hundreds of thousands of Europeans dying as slave labor in German armaments factories. His subordinate, Hans Franck, was hanged for obeying Speers's orders. Then schizophrenically, we gave Speer, who issued the orders, a life sentence, from which he was paroled a few decades later. Speer is but one of many thousands who should have also dangled on a rope.)
"We learn from History, that we don't learn from History." Spanish historian Georges Santayana
I think the greatest legacy left by the British Empire is the supremacy of a single language (English) in the world. All over the world people whose mother tongue is something other than English are learning English as a second language. That, coupled with Al Gore's invention, means we can all talk together.
I'll never forget when the Internet was new (and email, too) I communicated via email with a woman who was in India. That was soooo cool. She and I both were on the executive the Manitoba Library Association, and she had had to go home to India because her father was very ill.
Now we've gotten the little disagreement of 1776 behind us, other than the sore losers of the United Empire Loyalists, from which we get the streak of Canadian look-down-their-noses anti-Americanism. Hey, you back the wrong, losing side, you get it up the ass! Too bad, so sad!
I'm reminded of an incident during the darkest part of the Revolution. The King's Hessian mercenaries had just inflicted a defeat on the Continental Army and the news had just reached Parliament. Parties weren't as formally organized as today, but the king's aristocratic supporters forming a majority, stood up and gave a rousing cheer. The great William Pitt, a pro-American former Prime Minister who had incurred George III's displeasure, costing him his job, stood up in Parliament, was recognized: "Mr. Speaker, the victory of German mercenaries over freeborn Englishman holds NO joy for me!" Then he walked out, to a stunned, silenced House.
Then there was the Earl of Effingham. He was his father's third son and normally wouldn't expect to inherit the title and estate. Consequently, he took up an Army career, and served with great distinction alongside American colonial militia regiments in what you Canucks call the Seven Years War, what we call the French and Indian War, in the 1760s. He had enormous regard for what were still though of as "our American cousins". In the interim, both his elder brothers had died and he inherited the family title and property. By this time, he was a full Colonel, commanding an infantry regiment. He received orders to prepare his infantry regiment for service in the "colonies", suppressing the "rebels". He had great esteem for us Yanks, had made some lifelong friendships, and considered the King and his officials fully responsible for provoking the Revolution. Rather than obey that order and fight Americans, he resigned his commission. Since, then, for most of our history, there has been a USS Effingham in commission in the US Navy. He was not alone in Britain in those sentiments.
All that aside, now that we've put the War of Independence behind us, I have to agree on the profound benefit of the British Empire to world civilization. The fruits of the Enlightenment: the English language, the English Common Law, Parliamentary Democracy, British Arts and Literature, a helluva long list. Now the British nation is supposed to be guilty about all of that?! Were it not for the British Empire, it'd be a very different, very impoverished, dark world. (Not to mention Scotch whiskey! :-)
That's beem my theory, too. Most of the UEL landed in what is now Ontario, AKA the Centre of the Universe. Even their highway signs have the UEL crown on them.
BTW, just to prove I'm getting old, I just fell out of bed, on my way to the bathroom to pee. Had to crawl the rest of the way. Growing old is such fun. Too early to go to bed anyway. GO RIDERS!!
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