Pakistan is no “banana republic”, says Musharraf

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.khaleejtimes.ae/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/subcontinent/2006/September/subcontinent_September944.xml§ion=subcontinent

ISLAMABAD - Scoffing at rumours that he had been overthrown in a coup while visiting the United States, President Pervez Musharraf said Pakistan was not an unstable ”banana republic”.

Independent television channel Geo News on Monday showed the president smiling and laughing with journalists in the United States as he scotched speculation that he had been toppled.

“It is a nonsense. What should I say about this. Look we aren’t, thank God, a banana republic, where such things happen suddenly,” said Musharraf, who came to power himself in a bloodless military coup seven years ago.

Last week, Thaksin Shinawatra was ousted as Thai prime minister while attending the United Nations General Assembly in New York, which Musharraf also attended.

[liberal N proud]

1. All they are missing is the bananas

[zonkers]

7. snicker. He sure takes his lapdogness in stride but I actually can't

blame him. What choice did he have? He was about to become flavor of the month right after 9-11.

[Marr]

2. Right- he won his office in an open, democratic military coup.

Uh-huh.

I remember when all our news media started referring to Musharraf as "President" rather than "General". It was about 2 weeks after 9-11. Very 1984.

We're supposed to believe that Musharraf, a man who seized power in a military coup, is a "president", while Chavez, who's won the office in fair elections, is a "dictator".

[RethugAssKicker]

3. Unbelievable isn't it?

[sui generis]

8. well as far as democratic leadership goes

it ain't a democracy if they're stuffing the ballot boxes. Woopsie, did I say something ironic? This "democracy" in Iraq is SOOO much better than the dictatorship it replaced, isn't it.

My personal thought is that Musharraf has been far better FOR Pakistan than his predecessors who were as disgustingly corrupt as it was possible to be. I worked in Pakistan (Karachi) shortly before the coup and I can tell you firsthand that Karachi was under siege from the worst possible kind of corruption and just as dangerous back then under that "democracy" as it would be for blonde haired green eyed westerners today.

In fact, under his predecessor the "extrajudicial" (military) tribunal was increasingly used for civil matters. What that meant was due process was bypassed, and a local tribunal eager to line their pockets could pick you up, torture you, drop you off at a hospital and then send your family a bill for your "medical care". A hospital could refuse to care for someone who had been officially "questioned", because they themselves could come under suspicion; liability if the victim survived and liability if they died.

The last one I saw there was a fourteen year old boy in Karachi who had had his legs wrenched out of their sockets and ribs broken being returned to his family on a stretcher; it was one of the final straws, also printed in the Dawn (www.dawn.com) newspaper.

Anyway Pakistan is an Islamic Republic, for the record.

http://www.presidentofpakistan.gov.pk/ThePresident.aspx

[sweetheart]

4. is he unclear?

Pakistan is a total banana republic, a nation of idiots that have spread WMD's irresponsibly
and spread terrrorism similarly, and Pervert Moustachef is a joke. He was hired from
central casting in Los Angeles back in the 80's, who used to be called Danny Garcia, but
he's really fallen in with his method acting. His hope is a cameo in a mission impossible
episode where they take away a nuclear trigger from a banana republic before it goes boom.

[NNN0LHI]

5. Our Marines will be pulling him out of some spider hole very soon

He just doesn't know it yet. Saddam didn't either when he was our buddy. The idiots never learn.

Don

[sui generis]

9. well and the U.S. is a total banana republic too

apparently we can't even count our own votes. We actually have had a former actor as our president a retired pro-wrestler as a governor and another retired actor as a governor, plus a brain-dead moron in office right now. Oh and don't forget OUR terrorists blew up a federal building in Oklahoma, not in some foreign country.

We are SO much better than Pakistan, doncha think?

[sweetheart]

10. In womens rights terms, its day and night

Pakistan does not have equal rights for women, not even close,
and as the US degenerates, its not that bad yet. Women have freedom
and liberty to be unwed, and be whatever theri own business in whatever
career, and is the difference with a banana republic.

We can't count the votes, and the problem is a systemic cable TV rot
and addiction to being intellectually lazy and dishonest about how much
we have paid for and constructed all our own problems.

[sui generis]

11. good point about women's rights

and while they don't execute people for being gay, it is a jailable offense.

There are many banana republics where women actually DO have rights, but even modern Islamic republics treat women differently at the most basic unit of culture - the family.

I was just primarily irritated by the smugness I guess. There are decent people all through Pakistan, and most people don't know it but English is the official language, with Urdu following a close second. Musharraf is a different kind of Pakistani leader; and I would add that he is a man who genuinely loves his country, instead of a man who genuinely loves power.

It IS a different culture, a far far older culture, and one that has been invaded and crossed through by virtually every army since Iskander of Macedonia (Alexander). Even Urdu, roughly translated, means "camp tongue", or like any patois, is linguistically equivalent to Creole or Yiddish with many borrowed words from many borrowed languages.

There are traditionalists who believe the west is an evil influence, and blame America for their own overfishing and environmental problems, and even social problems (women want to work! terrible American influence), despise western dress and influence, and have themselves great influence in society. But once you start talking business and real money and real opportunity, the people making decisions wear suits just like the rest of us as a mark of distinction from the people who merely have to ask how high on the way up when they say jump.

I just hate putting down a whole culture that is fundamentally different from us merely for being different from us, just to make ourselves feel better about ours.

It was your generalization about "a nation of idiots" that I found indistinguishable from America.

[sweetheart]

12. Yes, we are all a nation of idiots

That dictator is doing pakistan no favours, no matter how much 'love' he has.
The rise of musharraf is propped up on the rise of bush, and i don't see these
as separate phenomena at all, a global pusch against minority rights, and as such
every head of the hydra must be chopped off, dictators and army chiefs is so
cold war, and just when they sing nicer songs, are we to call them presidents.

The loose cannon model of exporting nuclear arms and starting aggressive wars,
are musharraff's nationalism, and in a world where bush would be tried for
aggressive war crimes, musharraff would swing at the hague as well.

[Zomby Woof]

6. He says that because they have nukes

But in essence, it's a fourth-rate country run by tinhorn crackpots.

[EnfantTerrible]

13. Of course not...

If they were, they wouldn't have been sophisticated enough participate in (fund) the attacks on 9/11 and give this administration the Pearl Harbor it has worked so long and hard to bring about.