Murdoch media columnist for Sydney's The Daily Telegraph, Piers Akerman, like all fervent enemies of true democracy, thinks there is a time and place for military dictatorships. In this case, Pakistan :
The developing crisis in Pakistan, however, does highlight the nature of international terrorism and its ability to destabilise populations well beyond the assassin’s bullet or bomb.
Pakistan is certainly no model of democracy but General Pervez Musharraf’s military dictatorship was a major bulwark - leaky and corrupt as it may have been - against Taliban and al-Qaeda forces.
Is Akerman, "one of Australia's most respected journalists", really so ignorant and downright dense that he doesn't know Musharraf's intelligence services raised the Taliban and helped shape and empower the collection of extremist groups collectively known as Al Qaeda?
Is he merely playing dumb, or is he lost for an opinion because so many Evil Lefties thought Bhutto's death was as tragic and horrific as Condoleezza Rice and George W. Bush thought it was?
Akerman thinks that if Musharraf wasn't ruling by military dictatorship, the 'Islamists' would seize power. He's an idiot. In a free and fair election, extremists in Pakistan would win power. They wouldn't even come close. It's incredibly insulting to the people of Pakistan to entertain the belief that they are literally chomping at the bit to elect a Bin Laden, or that they all want to live under Sharia law. It's fiction. More importantly, it's NeoCon fiction, and Akerman is an enthusiastic subscriber to this trash.
Even while dribbling, Akerman still manages to keep whistling the NeoCon theme song : 'We All Love Democracy, Yes We Do, As Long As Its The Same Democracy That We Want For You'.
It's the Hamas paradigm all over again. Sure, goes Akerman's thinking, vote for whoever you want, it's a democratic election after all, but just because you elect them doesn't mean our nations will recognise who you all voted for, let alone speak to them, or practice diplomacy. Hell, someone else but Musharraf might not buy enough weapons from the West if they were to win a Pakistan election. Or, God forbid, they might buy their weapons from Russia or China instead.
Akerman is anti-democracy and anti-free market.
Akerman winds out his nasty little pro-military dictatorship screed by leaping into the kind of segue-way that would have the writers of Today Tonight bowing in unworthiness at his bloated feet. Witness :
Pakistan has the bomb and is the linchpin in the war against al-Qaeda.Wow. Akerman realised he had actually finished a whole column without sploffing on the Labor Party, and then saw he had a few dozen words left. Surely there must be an anti-Rudd government angle in Bhutto's assassination? There wasn't, but Akerman shoehorned one in anyway.“It’s a very alarming situation. Could fall like ripe fruit into the hands of the bad guys.”
Indeed. The worrying thing is that Australia is currently being run by a P-plate Government with a Defence Minister in Joel Fitzgibbon who has shown he is yet to understand that responsibility is about more than amiability and a Foreign Affairs Minister in Stephen Smith who thought until last month that he was in line for the education portfolio.
In a word, Australia is, at this time of international crisis, completely rudderless.
Akerman backs military dictatorships, but despises Australians when they exercise their democratic rights, having recently labeled more than half of Australia voters as "mugs" for voting in the Rudd government.
Maybe Akerman's brain is still short-circuiting over his hero John Howard's refusal to let him edit the Howard Diaries.
Akerman asked Howard for the gig in person at the Liberal Party election massacre party ("Nooo!!!") and Howard turned Akerman down on the spot, even though he kissed Howard's arse so fervently and pathetically that people standing nearby who overheard Akerman had to turn away in embarrassment.
