All employments of the military throw up lessons for those willing to learn. And unpopular employments, whether in war or in peace, have more to teach. But it is also true that those who ought to be learning such lessons, shy away from them, dig in their heels, and reinforce disaster to prove themselves right.
Small men with large egos in positions of great power are the most potent powder kegs of disaster. They need to learn more than most, but seldom do.
Few employments of the military were so deeply unpopular as the US misadventure in Vietnam. Protests against this war first erupted on the streets and US campuses. Public anger first registered itself in a meaningful way in 1964 at the University of Michigan. From then on both this anger and its expression spread all over the US.
This reached its apogee with the killings at Kent State in 1970 when about a thousand universities, colleges, and high schools all over the US exploded in protest. The situation was just a notch below that of civil war.
Before the Kent State debacle, President Johnson for forced to take notice, and to tamp the public anger down, he had already announced that he would not be running for the next elections. But in the backrooms where all the planning took place, what reigned was the certainty, reinforced by defeated generalship, that all that was needed to win the war in Vietnam was the infusion of a few more troops in the theatre of war!
Meanwhile, on the field of battle itself, the soldiers fighting and dying in war, introduced their own novel form of protest. In 1966 they resorted to “FRAGGING”. This entailed disposing off officers who were most enthusiastic about the war by use of the fragmentation grenade.
In 1969, after the Battle of Hamburger Hill, the G. Is put out a reward of ten thousand dollars to be won by anyone who would put an end to Col Weldon Honeycutt, the man they held responsible for the large toll of casualties sustained during this battle. This reward was posted on the underground G.I newspaper: “G. I Says”.
The Colonel had many narrow escapes, and it became routine that grenades were withdrawn from some units for certain periods. This was a bit like our security measure of withdrawing ammunition from troops when Napoleon is to visit them!
By the time the Vietnam War ended, and the US declared victory and skulked out of Vietnam, over 900 incidents of attempted fragging had taken place.
The connection between the US war in Vietnam and what is happening in Pakistan today is the unpopular use of the military in both. In Vietnam it was the war, in Pakistan it is the use of the army for the suppression of popular will.
The High Command in Pakistan has used the “government” and the courts in incremental steps to destroy PTI, starting with banning their rallies to the ultimate step of divesting this party of its electoral symbol, and thus virtually ruling it out of electoral contest. But each step the High Command has taken to break PTI down was also a backhanded compliment to the breadth and depth of its strength, and thus also a recognition of this strength.
One wonders therefore if the High Command has also made logical deductions from this recognition of PTI’s overwhelming public support?
Two such deductions that should have been drawn should be quite obvious: one, that PTI support among the soldiers, from whom the High Command derives its power, must be in proportion with that of the public at large whose brothers, sons, nephews, and friends etc these soldiers happen to be; and two, that potentially therefore these soldiers must despise the High Command quite as much as their civilian brethren do.
If those who constitute the High Command do not have the humility to carry out an objective analysis of the situation, they must borrow such humility for a little while. And if they do, they may conclude that it would be way better for them not to force an election at all, than having one which is so patently bastardized as the one being planned. An army used to further such wide ranging and shameful falsehood as the election in the works, shall have little purpose left after the deed, beyond being disbanded.
If the High Command opts for such an election, it would be opting for the formal adoption of LYING and FALSEHOOD as a symbol for the Pakistan Army. This will cause terminal affliction to the army after which it would not be able to stand as a fighting force except against its own people. The High Command must know that the “discipline” they so pride and depend on, is sustained in the soldier by a faith at a deeper level in which he is vested. And that is his faith that he will only be used for the greater good of Pakistan and that his officers will not “squander” him away by burying him in falsehoods.
This faith is nullified when lying becomes the credo of his higher ups. When this is the case discipline goes out of the window. And when discipline evaporates, the same soldier who LAYS DOWN his life at a general’s command, is tempted to resort to “fragging”, to TAKE the general’s life instead.
Right now, the generals are in no position to take a walk down Raja Bazaar, unescorted and in uniform. Tomorrow they will not need to do so, because they are creating such conditions that Raja Bazaar may come to visit them in their own gated compounds instead.
It is time for mercy now, from the generals to us. The time will still be there tomorrow as well. But that will be time for mercy from the people to them.
But it does not have to be this way. The time for course correction is still there; and also time for the prayer that this will not be squandered.