A very interesting article coming out of Pakistan... very interesting indeed.
from:
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default...-12-2004_pg3_2
.....
THINKING ALOUD: No beating about the Bush �Razi Azmi
I can definitely live with Bush as US president � or as the world�s sole policeman � for eight years or longer, but would hate to spend even eight days under the Taliban�s theocracy, Saddam�s dictatorship or a regime of Ayatollahs. I have a strong feeling that the vast majority of people everywhere feel the same way
A fellow columnist and friend thinks that I am �soft on Bush�. Considering the degree of President George Bush�s unpopularity in Pakistan and worldwide, it would be an understatement to say that most readers will concur with his view. When Bush is the subject, nothing short of outright denunciation is in order these days. I, therefore, consider it necessary to offer an explanation for my perceived �softness�.
Far be it from me � being a staunch believer in secularism � to approve of Bush�s brand of evangelicalism and his penchant for mixing religion with politics. However, for me Bush is a non-issue. Firstly, I am not an American, nor are my readers. Secondly, Bush is not a threat to the world or to democracy and secularism in America, but Al Qaeda and its many affiliates who carry out terrorist attacks in the name of Islam are a clear and present danger. And, finally, the US constitution and civil society are capable of putting religious zealots, not to mention bigots, in their proper place. In any case, those who take the worst possible view of George Bush may relax in the knowledge that on January 21, 2009, he will have passed into oblivion, for the 22nd Amendment to the US constitution (1951) bars presidents from running for a third term.
The widespread revulsion for Bush is based on two factors: his Christian evangelicalism and his �war on terror.�
The First Amendment (1792) prevents any US president from infusing religion in politics. It states: �Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion ...�. These ten words enshrine and guarantee the highly secular nature of the American state. Applying this constitutional bar in 1962, the US Supreme Court (in Engel vs Vitale) outlawed prayers in schools. Ruling on the constitutionality of a 22-word prayer, crafted by the New York State Board of Regents, which was read aloud daily in public school classrooms and in which student participation was voluntary, the Court said:
�Neither the fact that the prayer may be denominationally neutral nor the fact that its observance on the part of the students is voluntary can serve to free it from the limitations of the Establishment Clause [First Amendment]... Its first and most immediate purpose rested on the belief that a union of government and religion tends to destroy government and to degrade religion... The Establishment Clause thus stands as an expression of principle on the part of the Founders of our Constitution that religion is too personal, too sacred, too holy, to permit its �unhallowed perversion� by a civil magistrate.� President Reagan failed in his attempt to re-introduce prayer in schools. This also explains why Bush avoids any direct mention of Christianity in his speeches and press conferences, except in a very general sense and together with other major faiths, including Islam.
To overturn this constitutional prohibition would require a constitutional amendment, which is not to be taken lightly. There are essentially two ways spelled out in the Constitution for amendments, of which one has never been used. The only viable method, therefore, is for a bill to pass both parts of the Congress (House of Representatives and Senate), by a two-thirds majority in each. Once the bill has passed both houses, it goes on to the states. The amendment must be approved by three-fourths of states (which means 38 of the 50 states). Furthermore, at no point does the president have a role in the formal amendment process. Small wonder that only 17 amendments have been made since 1792.
An episode involving religion during the Bush presidency is worth mentioning. Chief Justice Roy Moore of the Alabama Supreme Court installed a 2.6-tonne, four-foot-high monument inscribed with the biblical Ten Commandments in the court building on July 31, 2001. On October 30, 2001, the American Civil Liberties Union, in conjunction with Americans United for Separation of Church and State, filed a suit against him, saying his display of the Ten Commandments was an unconstitutional establishment of religion in a government building.
�Roy�s Rock� with the Ten Commandments, as the monument came to be called, proved feeble before this legal challenge and was gone by November 2003, Bush�s evangelicalism notwithstanding. Not only that, but Justice Moore also lost his job. Alabama�s nine-member Court of the Judiciary unanimously removed Chief Justice Roy Moore from office for defying a federal judge�s order to move the Ten Commandments monument from the state Supreme Court building. The ethics panel said Moore put himself above the law by � wilfully and publicly� flouting the order to remove it.
George Bush�s military intervention in Afghanistan and invasion of Iraq have attracted the most condemnation. However, the former has been an astounding success (above all, from the Afghans� point of view), while the latter is hardly the debacle many commentators represent it to be. In Afghanistan, an utterly despicable regime has been replaced by an elected president. Schools and roads are being built where the religious police once trod. In Iraq, except for the twenty per cent Sunnis who rode roughshod over the rest of the population under the previous regime, the people are eagerly awaiting the elections due next month.
Many people grieve over the unipolar world and hark back nostalgically to the bipolar world of the Soviet era. They need to be reminded that during the heyday of bipolarism and Cold War, the world came close to a nuclear catastrophe (Cuban Missile Crisis), the Korean and Vietnam wars wrought havoc in the Korean peninsula and Indo-China, there were two Arab-Israeli wars and two wars between India and Pakistan. The Soviet Union invaded Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan, while US meddling led to the overthrow of an elected government in Chile and caused turmoil in many Latin American countries. Angola and Mozambique were torn apart by gruesome civil wars with superpower involvement on all sides, China invaded North Vietnam to �teach it a lesson,� and the Iraq-Iran war led to a million deaths.
Taking advantage of the superpower tensions, Morocco occupied Western Sahara and Indonesia invaded East Timor. The Cold War generated a war between Somalia and Ethiopia. It allowed South Africa to remain in the throes of apartheid and gave Suharto a free hand to kill or incarcerate hundreds of thousands of alleged communists in Indonesia. The Khmer Rouge, who wiped out a fifth of Cambodia�s population, were also a by-product of that era.
The world is now a much safer and a much more democratic place. Thanks to the unipolar world with America as the sole superpower, democracy is advancing while dictatorships are receding. Dictators who roamed with a swagger now scurry for cover. Disenfranchised people now feel empowered, from Afghanistan to Georgia, and from Iraq to Ukraine. Bush�s band of neo-cons is succeeding where his more illustrious predecessors failed; they act where others balked.
Bush is not a threat to any democratic dispensation anywhere in the world. If he has made the world a trifle unsafe for thugs and dictators, he is to be commended. In any case, he will be gone sooner than we think. But terrorism in the name of Islam, which now stalks the world, is an unprecedented development in terms of magnitude, intensity, scope and danger. I can definitely live with Bush as US president � or as the world�s sole policeman � for eight years or longer, but would hate to spend even eight days under the Taliban�s theocracy, Saddam�s dictatorship or a regime of Ayatollahs. I have a strong feeling that the vast majority of people everywhere feel the same way.
The author, a former academic with a doctorate in modern history, is now a freelance writer and columnist
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