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Of all the many things that one could say about the sobering -- frightening -- events surrounding the descent of Pakistan in the past four days into martial law and a dictatorship, the one thing you can't say is that General Musharraf and his minions don't know their Shakespeare.
Most folks still think that Dick the Butcher's urging of Henry Cade, the instigator of mob unrest in Henry VI Part II meant that lawyers should get the kibosh generally just because we are pains in the butt.
I concede that some of us can be a pain in the butt.
But many of us are also on the front lines of defense of justice in a free country. Whether we're talking about ours, or someone else's.
An example of this is now being writ large in Pakistan, where General Pervez Musharraf is systematically installing hand-picked judges to replace those legitimate ones who had the temerity to question the legality of his election. Replacing them with his hand-picked cronies.
It was the lawyers of Pakistan who first stood up to fight back against the imposition of military dictatorship and destruction of the constitutional rule of law, back in March 2007 when Musharraf fired the country's chief justice.
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And now, as they continue fight back, in a display of how ugly a world can get where lawyers are seen only as elite folks who are dispensible to true justice, they are literally getting tear gassed and their asses beat down by the government police in the process.
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It is a rare image, seeing a court advocate in our traditional "uniform" being beaten and upended by those with riot gear on, beaten down by those who -- at least in theory -- are sworn to protect and defend. It is a rare thing, hearing that those sworn to uphold the rule of law have threatened to throw eggs at a judge for being an affront to constitutional process should he choose to ascend the bench.
Yet it hearkens back to Henry VI, the idea that one way to consolidate power is to eliminate the rule of law, starting with rounding up and detaining the lawyers who are most likely to resist its destruction.
As has been happening in Pakistan all weekend. First, it was Musharraf literally firing the judges of the country's Supreme Court who were poised to declare his continued leadership of the country illegal and placing them under armed detention, until they could be placed under house arrest, where they reportedly remain. Now it is the lawyers who are being rounded up systematically by our so-called ally in the war on terra, in Lahore, Islamabad, Punjab, reportedly throughout the country every where that they have stood up and protested what is occuring.
Of course, the narrative about all this here in the US -- which claims to be the beacon of democracy in the free world -- has been a bit muted. Officially, the US finds it "highly regrettable" that General Musharraf did not listen to Condoleezza Rice's "strong urging" not to impose military rule and is now "deeply disturbed" by Musharraf's backtracking on his promise to step down in January, 2008 (something that only a retard could not have seen coming, but I digress). But from the perspective of the warmongering megalomaniacs that currently occupy the White House, the most important thing appears to be not that the democratic rights of the people of Pakistan are being trammeled, its Supreme Court under lock and key and its lawyers literally being beaten in the streets, but the possible impact on what history will always remember as Bush's folly: the "War on Terra". Our government, normally the first to rush out with rhetoric when our "enemies" deny democracy, is muted and admittedly because they are afraid of alienating Musharraf, one of America's few remaining allies on the issue of the War on Terra. We would not want to do anything to have the nuclear-armed country that shares borders with both India and Afghanistan mad at us, would we?
Of course we wouldn't. Even if this weekend's coup can only be seen as one giant middle finger thrown by Musharraf at the United States of America where what we think should happen is concerned.
Even if Musharraf and his police thugs dish out some terra of their own against judges, against lawyers, against students, and soon likely (if not already, news has been very thin since the outside media blackout on Friday) against anyone who protests his ongoing rule. Since after all, terra committed by those who are fighting the "war on terra" is not really "terra." It's "keeping the world safe from terra."
Even if it's also propping up a military puppet and his government and enabling them to trammel the rights of their own people, while they get and stay wealthy at the same time through their stranglehold on wealth in Pakistan. Even if it's continuing to be America financing those very undemocratic things - as we appear to be poised to continue to do, rather than immediately jank our country's economic support from a leader that (if he wore a communist face, or a Saddam Hussein "We Disdain America" face), but for the supposed War on Terra we'd have kicked to the curb and threatened with literal invasion as soon as he even tried went down this path.
But so far, we do nothing. Because, as long as he labels everyone who opposes him and is resisting him a "terrorist" and everything he wants as part of the War on Terrror -- as General Musharraf was very very careful to do in his Proclamation of Emergency this weekend -- it's apparently OK.
Of course, this is not to say that there are not terrorists or terror in Pakistan. I'm sure there are. But who are the terrorists in Pakistan? Al Qaeda? The Taliban? I guess, but if I go by the words of the locals in one of the regions in Pakistan currently beset by "terra", there is a real question as to whether the "militants" would even be ascending if that did not serve a convenient political agenda: General Musharraf securing ongoing funding and support for his government from the United States:
He has his own explanation of why the militants are on the rise, a variation of that given by others in the region.
"Musharraf wants the support of the Americans, so he frightens the Americans and allows these people to come so Bush will give more money and weapons," he said. "This could have been curbed a year ago."
Yet I have a hard time believing that these "insurgents" in regions like Swat, and the reascention of the Taliban in those places, is the real reason that Musharraf suspended the Constitution of Pakistan on Friday. Even if it is a reason, it's certainly not his only or even primary concern, if I go by General Musharraf's own words when he suspended the Pakistani Constitution on Friday, and that's why I'm up at 5:00 AM on a Monday writing this when I am wending towards trial and have two motions to write in 2 days. I am writing because, to me, if Americans don't look at what little censored news we are getting about what is presently occuring in Pakistan and don't see any parallels between what is happening in Pakistan in the name of "The War on Terra" and the many expressed sentiments of the current Fascist-in-Training occupying the White House and his cronies, then we are as a nation blinded by the (deadly) light:
. . .WHEREAS some members of the judiciary are working at cross purposes with the executive and legislature in the fight against terrorism and extremism. . .
WHEREAS there has been increasing interference by some members of the judiciary in government policy, adversely affecting economic growth, in particular;
WHEREAS constant interference in executive functions, including but not limited to the control of terrorist activity, economic policy, price controls, downsizing of corporations and urban planning, has weakened the writ of the government; the police force has been completely demoralized and is fast losing its efficacy to fight terrorism and Intelligence Agencies have been thwarted in their activities and prevented from pursuing terrorists. . .
WHEREAS some hard core militants, extremists, terrorists and suicide bombers, who were arrested and being investigated were ordered to be released.. . .
WHEREAS the humiliating treatment meted to government officials by some members of the judiciary on a routine basis during court proceedings has demoralized the civil bureaucracy and senior government functionaries, to avoid being harassed, prefer inaction;
Hmm. Sounds like there's a little more than passing concern about things that don't have anything to do with suicide bombings and terrorist activities in there, doesn't it? I mean, after all, why make the bulk our your justification for imposing martial law not about them, but about how much the courts and lawyers have, in doing their job, thwarted what the executive branch wanted to do?
Doesn't that sound to anyone else just like George Bush, Dick Cheney and their DOJ whining about the pushback by lawyers and the judiciary against stuff they have been doing (like wiretapping American citizens, obtaining their private records without subpoena, finding that detainees had the right to counsel and/or to be made aware of the charges against them, finding that detainees were actually innocent -- or at a minimum that the government hadn't presented sufficient reason to keep them locked up)?
I'm just a lawyer, but it sure sounds like it to me.
Of course the obvious question is this: with allies in the War on Terra like Musharraf's junta, who needs enemies? (Especially all the enemies we are likely to make with the Pakistani people if we do not do something to help them restore the rule of law to their country - and I don't mean sending Condi to wag her fingers.) I thought we'd learned our national lessons about propping up military puppets decades ago, yet here we are again, saying nothing, and doing nothing, other than continuing to send the checks.
And while we send the checks, the lawyers of Pakistan are literally putting their bodies on the line against the boot of the militarypolice, for the principles that we and the thug now in complete charge of Pakistan, General Musharraf, say we stand for.
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The only difference to me between then and now is that our current government might actually believe that this is all OK rather than just say it. I really do believe after 7 years under Dubbya that he and his hand-picked folks genuinely believe that the ends -- the alleged "fight against the War on Terror" -- actually justifies whatever means in Pakistan and (to a so-far less violent degree, thank God) in our own country: starting with the creation of disdain for, and then if that doesn't work, the outright suppression of the rule of law. Suppression which can only start if you render ineffectual or mute those sworn to uphold it, the lawyers. Including those lawyers in (usually) Black robes that we here in America call judges.
I realize that talking about presidential campaigns and whether someone is racist, sexist, homophobic or just plain old too unattractive to be president or whether this poll means that this candidate is anointed or finished; Imus maybe getting his job back and whether the Megan Williams case is, or is not, a hate crime; the never-ending dust-up over Israel and Palestine and whether someone is, or is not, anti-semitic; and whether some left-wing bloggers are, or are not, either part of or enabling the vast right wing conspiracy they supposedly hate, is All That on a regular basis on too many important left wing blogs. Thus, something boring like what is taking place in Pakistan might seem wholly unimportant in the larger scheme of things. But I do think that folks should be paying close attention to what is occuring in Pakistan right now, and what it may teach us about what may happen here, one day, if folks don't do something about the folks who are still officially in charge of the United States for another 14 1/2 months.
I felt I needed to do so, anyway. And while I did, to show some love to those lawyers and judges who are on the front lines of this struggle, there and here, when it comes to reigning in the government's abuse of power in the name of the War on Terra and corporate hegemony. After all, you don't want to wake up and hear the following words over our tee-vees one morning, do you?
WHEREAS a situation has thus arisen where the Government of the country cannot be carried on in accordance with the Constitution and as the Constitution provides no solution for this situation, there is no way out except through emergent and extraordinary measures. . .
I hereby order and proclaim that the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan United States of America shall remain in abeyance.
What stands in the way of that? Well, I'd argue that for the past seven years, that has been in large measure lawyers. Sure, here in America lawyers not yet literally sitting in the streets before a phalanx of military thugs, or pushing back against barricades being propped up by jack-booted military thugs, as they were in Pakistan in March, 2007 and are again today. But for the past seven years, laywers have been in the courts, been in the blogs, and been in the forefront of fighting back, through the insistence on our Constitution and rule of law, against Bush's own campaign to weaken our country's Constitutional principles and our rights as citizens and non-citizens all in the name of his War on Terror.
So the next time you get the opportunity hug a laywer. Especially a public interest lawyer. She or he might just be the one who threatens to throw eggs someday if anyone tries here what they are (sadly) succeeding with in Pakistan right now.