Posted on 11/21/2007 7:41:09 AM PST by sukhoi-30mki
If only Pervez were more like Suharto
Greg Sheridan, Foreign editor | November 08, 2007
PAKISTAN'S Pervez Musharraf is a weak, ineffective and foolish dictator. He is a dangerous friend and an impotent enemy. Long a trafficker in terrorism himself, he now justifies a second military coup by raising the spectre of further terrorism.
Nowhere in the world today is more important, more dangerous or more fluid than Pakistan. And it is all of that in part because of the personality and performance of its dictator.
Sometimes the word dictator can prevent clear thinking in the Western liberal mind, as often does the word war. But, as George Orwell observed, wars have results, and different wars have different results, depending who wins.......
But the Pakistani military has been playing black games with extremists in Kashmir and Afghanistan for so long, it has imported the disease it formerly exported to harm its neighbours. Under a previous military dictator, Zia-ul-Haq, the Islamisation of the Pakistan Army began. Now, the army looks to be in a pathetic state. It's pretty good at beating up lawyers, but any organised military opposition, as from primitive tribal groups in border areas, sees it readily defeated and its soldiers surrendering by the hundreds.....
Yet whereas Islamist extremism has grown in Musharraf's Pakistan, communism was destroyed in Indonesia.
Under Suharto, Indonesia, unlike Pakistan, never engaged in rogue behaviour regarding nuclear matters. And Suharto created widespread economic growth that created a middle class that ultimately wanted democracy. The contrast with Musharraf could not be greater. Not only is Pakistan ruled by a dictator, it is ruled by an incompetent and ineffective dictator. Thank God this was not true in Indonesia.
(Excerpt) Read more at theaustralian.news.com.au ...
And he also brutally suppresses Christians and looks the other way when they are raped, beheaded and burned out
I don’t know whom you are referring to here,but both Suharto & Musharraf have looked away when it came to abuses & murder of Christians & other minorities like Hindus & smaller Muslim sects-both have their hands drenched in blood.
Slaughtering several hundred thousand Roman Catholic East Timorese does not amount to anything worth remembering in Australia.
You may be confusing Suharto with someone else. I lived in Indonesia for quite a few years during the Suharto years and the type of activity you refer to was very uncommon. Most of the outrages came later, after Suharto was out of power.
Your use of the present tense indicates that you may have Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in mind.
I lived in Indonesia as an expat for a few years too, and I believe he’s referring to what happened in East Timor and more remote areas. Missionaries and foreign aid workers are very familiar with what horrors happened out there. As expats in Indonesia, most of us lived quite privileged lives and probably didn’t often hear about what was happening on the outskirts. I know that for some time I didn’t. Don’t know if that applies to you, and if it doesn’t, my apologies.
As for the 1998 riots and atrocities committed against the ethnic Chinese there, who knows? Lots of speculation about who might be behind them.
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