Star Wars

Bickering retired generals a prime time public menace

First, it was the Abbotabad raid and Ahmed Shuja Pasha, then the political handouts confession and Asad Durrani and now it is the turn of Kargil and Shahid Aziz. Garrulous retired generals, some also authors, have started taking to the television channels with a vengeance and become a prime time menace and a matter of concern for already distraught citizens.

The washing of dirty linen in public, formerly the exclusive monopoly of our political elite, has also been breached.

In our distressing milieu, it seems that Old Soldiers never die, they just fade away into the limelight of the television talk shows.

The truly great generals throughout history have usually been portrayed as grave, solemn and taciturn individuals till the last, which is not surprising as they have been in the grim business of ordering countless men to their deaths.

Winston Churchill once remarked that “modern generals are no battlefield heroes, but men glued to their telephones… like speculators with large holdings when the market is disturbed… their commands are uttered with decision. Sell 50,000 of this. Buy at the market 100,000 of that… they are the managers of a stock market or a stock yard’.

They might also have stirred up controversy and debate in some cases by writing about their battles, lives and times from their own perspective, as history is after all ‘a story without end’.

But stooping to the three-and-four star personal bickering, fishwives-like calumny and slander, and the accusations and counter-accusations that are daily being bandied about on our television screens, is a painful embarrassment and an utter disgrace.

And it only leads to more cynicism and confusion, provides ammunition to the implacable enemy as well as the defeatist elements and the Fifth Columnists in our midst. And so it needs to be stopped right now.

In a situation in which a belated acquisition of conscience and also a spine by ex-generals (or perhaps a hidden agenda, who can really tell?) has got the better of good sense, professional discretion and indeed of the national interest, a decisive riposte is of the essence.

The country is already beset by too many divisions, troubles and worries to bear this additional source of inner confusion and outside snickering. Can’t the Official Secrets Act be invoked against this increasing intrusion (or is it exposure?) of the outspoken retired generals in the mainstream media, and marching orders be handed over to them to repair to their respective golf courses or shooting clubs and observe silence?

The retired military men in the glare of the electronic media are like a fish out of water, completely out of their element. Unlike the battlefield, this terrain is an unchartered and especially tricky one, and in the hands of an ambitious ratings-conscious anchor, they are soon reduced to a mass of contradictions, evasions and explanations, all of which ring hollow. The anchor gleefully assumes the role of a commanding officer.

All the varied experience in military tactics and strategy counts for little against an onslaught of loaded and baited questions, of words quoted out of context, clouding their real meaning and other jugglery.

It is a totally one-sided affair, in which precision in argument and an entire array of facts will not decide the outcome in the desired way.

So, the retired senior servicemen should stop ‘disturbing the peace’ of the already overwrought and tortured citizens of this country. By frivolously opening up Pandora Boxes at this critical juncture, they are doing tremendous harm to the country that spawned them and to the service that nurtured them.

Let peace break out on the airwaves once again!

The writer is a freelance columnist.