Above reproach
By now, the specifics, or lack thereof, of the Mansoor Ijaz memo saga have been plastered all over the press and the airwaves. There are aspects of the affair that cannot possibly be confirmed and then there are issues of plausible deniability. But all that won’t matter. It would appear that the fate of our ambassador has been sealed whether or not anyone can find anything that sticks. The powers that be have long since taken a dislike to the ambassador; this is their moment. Truth be told, they didn’t even need a moment. Such is the bleak reality of our endeavour as a republic. This is the larger picture many from the media refuse to pay any attention to.
Accountability is a fine concept. But only when applied to some, it seems. The political class – no angels, granted – has been persecuted for far too long and has been blamed for far too much more than has ever been its due. The civil bureaucracy, higher on the list, receives a share of blame, if not as much as it should. But it is the military, specifically, that can do no wrong. No heads rolled, for instance, after the Abbottabad fiasco; in fact, in a dazzling exercise in mental gymnastics, it is the political government that is now being blamed for it. Inter-institutional relations in the country are a tails-you-lose, heads-I-win. No matter what the odds, to borrow a phrase from Las Vegas, the house always wins.
Treason is a word thrown around a little too much these days. Wrong, a political government appealing to a foreign power may be but treasonous it is not. Treason is overthrowing a civilian setup, not feeble and ill-thought out attempts at strengthening one. It is the military having its own plan of action in areas like the war on terror as opposed to the ones the representative governments have planned out. Or engineering the political process by incubating political parties and cobbling together alliances.
If the allegations do turn out to be true, then, after the mechanical decapitation, an attempt could be made to understand the deep-rooted malaise that causes such incidents in the first place.
