To say that I’ve been as busy as a one-armed paper hanger since last Friday morning would, of course, result in a lot of e-mails complaining that I am insensitive to persons with disabilities. But damn it, that’s exactly how busy I’ve been, and I’d rather run a 10 K three-legged race through a nuclear waste dump behind a manure spreader with my right leg tied to Dick Cheney than sacrifice the correct simile for the sake of something so intellectually bankrupt as political correctness. I’ve been much busier than a stupid beaver, for example, that’s for sure; however, I also realize that I have not been quite as busy as, say, the operator of a DC escort service on Inauguration Day – no, a one-armed paper hanger says it perfectly, and I’m sticking with it, or him, I guess, or possibly her, come what may to my bulging Inbox.
By now, I’m sure that most readers of this Web log know that, on the very day of her assassination, Benazir Bhutto was ready to drop the dirty dime on Pervez Musharraf, in the form of a 160-plus page dirt-dishing dossier she intended to give Senator Arlen Spector and Congressman Patrick Kennedy that very night at dinner. That wasn’t common knowledge Friday morning, however, as I spent the entire day on Capitol Hill dealing with the fallout, blowback and repercussions of the Bhutto assassination, which was, at that time, merely hours old.
The pure, naked and shocking immediacy of the situation did not prevent a nice young lady wearing a ring from Brown University from subjecting me to a lengthy PowerPoint presentation discussing, in excruciating detail, what the Senate Sub-Committee on Foreign Operations knew about it. This was that Pakistan is a country in South Asia, currently run by a military dictatorship lead by a bad guy named Pervez Musharraf, where people are not free, but with which nevertheless the United States must deal, because of Pakistan’s key strategic geographical position, its vital role in the War on Terror and America’s continuing obligation, as John Fitzgerald Kennedy put it, to “… pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” That last one got its own PowerPoint slide, with plenty of patriotic decorations and an overlay of JFK, looking heroic.
After the PowerPoint presentation, I spent several hours meeting with Senate and House staffers, who spared no effort, not to mention words and breath, making it clear that they, too, knew that Pakistan is a country in South Asia, currently run by a military dictatorship lead by a bad guy named Pervez Musharraf, where people are not free, but with which nevertheless the United States must deal, because of Pakistan’s key strategic geographical position, its vital role in the War on Terror and America’s continuing obligation to do all that stuff JFK said. Once all the staffers had had their say, there was a brief, expectant silence as they all stared intently at me. “So,” I politely inquired, “what contingency plans does Congress have, in the event that Benazir Bhutto is assassinated?”
A much longer silence ensued as puzzled looks made their way around the room. At last, the meeting moderator answered my question. Unfortunately, she did so with another question. “Specifically what do you mean, Mr. Collins, by ‘contingency plans?’”
“Written documentation describing various courses of action that either may or shall be taken by Congress after a Bhutto assassination,” I replied.
Another few tense moments passed as whispers swept around the room. Finally, the moderator spoke. “Mr. Collins, there are no contingency plans.”
“Any idea why not?”
“Because, Mr. Collins, it was not considered the role of Congress to perform any actions, should Benazir Bhutto be assassinated. Such action or actions, if any, in the opinion of Congress, should be the sole responsibility of the Executive Branch.”
“Understood,” I responded. “Which part of the Executive Branch, in your view, would be the appropriate one to take such actions?”
“Why, the Defense Department, of course,” the moderator stated confidently, as all the congressional staffers nodded agreement.
There was no way I could take Saturday off, that’s for sure, so I showed up at Oh-Dark-Thirty to meet with representatives of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. A handsome young Army captain wearing a West Point ring gave me a PowerPoint presentation that lasted well past late breakfast time. His PowerPoint presentation told me, in excruciating detail, what the Pentagon knows about Pakistan. It’s right next to Afghanistan, where we are fighting a bunch of rag-headed, Koran-thumping fundamentalists called the Taliban for control of the countryside and the opium trade. Centuries of military history and a plethora of tomes on military doctrine have proven that control of the countryside is important, while previous experience in Vietnam has taught the Joint Chiefs of Staff the critical importance of controlling the opium trade. This is because if the Defense Department doesn’t control the opium trade, then the CIA will take it over and there will be all Hell to pay, just like there was in Vietnam. Pakistan is also where Osama bin Laden is hiding, and he’s hiding there because the Defense Department wasn’t allowed to take the stinking SOB out when the Defense Department had the chance, and that’s because of those idiots at the State Department. As far as the Pentagon is concerned, despite the fact that Pakistan’s navy couldn’t win a battle against a bunch of Sea Scouts, Pakistan has a pretty good army – it’s big and they have lots of guns and ammo, all of which are necessary because, the Defense Intelligence Agency is quite certain, if they didn’t have it, India would invade faster than you can say “curry dysentery” and exterminate the Pakistani population. As a matter of fact, Pakistan and India have been practicing to conduct and warming up to fight a major, decisive war for decades in a nearby place called Kashmir, which the Joint Chiefs realize has extreme strategic significance due to its proximity to Communist China and, what’s more, the extremely high quality of sweater materials available only from that region. Pakistan is also overrun with hordes of its own Koran-thumping, fundamentalist rag-heads and what’s worse, Pakistan also has nukes, which is why we have to play ball with this Pervez Musharraf, because he’s Our Man in Islamabad, and who knows what kind of raving Moslem asshats might get hold of those nukes if old Pervez weren’t there to keep the flipping Comanches on the frigging reservation? So, the earnest young captain’s PowerPoint presentation concluded, the Department of Defense is committed to doing all that stuff JFK said and plans to accomplish the goal of freedom for Pakistan through a program of winning the people’s hearts and minds via a coordinated land, sea and air assault strategy employing tri-service elements ranging from commando units to heavy mobile armor with comprehensive air support, configured to fight and win an asymmetrical conflict against fanatical insurgent cadres with acceptable levels of fighting force and civilian collateral casualties.
After the PowerPoint presentation, I spent several hours meeting with Army, Navy and Air Force brass, who spared no effort, not to mention words and breath, making it clear that they, too, knew that Pakistan is right next to Afghanistan, where we are fighting a bunch of rag-headed, Koran-thumping fundamentalists called the Taliban for control of the countryside and the opium trade, that it’s also where Osama bin Laden is hiding, and he’s hiding there because the Defense Department wasn’t allowed to take the stinking SOB out when the Defense Department had the chance, and that’s because of those idiots at the State Department; and as far as the Pentagon is concerned, despite the fact that Pakistan’s navy sucks out loud, it still has a pretty good army and if they didn’t have it, India would invade faster than you can say “curry dysentery;” and Pakistan is also overrun with hordes of its own Koran-thumping, fundamentalist rag-heads and what’s worse, Pakistan also has nukes, which is why we have to play ball with this Pervez Musharraf, because he’s Our Man in Islamabad, and of course, the Pentagon plans to accomplish the goal of freedom for Pakistan through a strategy of winning the Pakistani people’s hearts and minds by blowing them to Kingdom Come if they don’t get with the program.
Once all the officers had had their say, there was a brief, expectant silence as they all stared intently at me. “So,” I politely inquired, “what contingency plans does the Pentagon have, in the event that Benazir Bhutto is assassinated?”
A much longer silence ensued as puzzled looks made their way around the room. At last, a Marine general answered my question.
“We have contingency plans up the wazoo, Mr. Collins, but they’re all based on military actions.”
“That’s right,” a colonel from the Army Judge Advocate General chimed in. “Legally, we can’t even think about assassinations. The Bhutto situation is strictly a political matter, not a military one by any means whatsoever.”
“Then which arm of the Executive Branch, in your opinion,” I queried, now more than a bit miffed, “is the one responsible for constructing such a contingency plan?”
“Oh, without a doubt, Mr. Collins,” an Air Force lieutenant general assured me as all his colleagues nodded confidently in affirmation, “that would be the State Department.”
So there was no rest for me on Sunday, when I traveled to Foggy Bottom, there to be greeted by a pretty young lady wearing a Harvard ring, who gave me a PowerPoint presentation explaining what the State Department knows about Pakistan. The region we now call Pakistan has been a continuous site of human habitation since the Late Paleolithic Era, which was so long ago, even Henry Kissinger wasn’t alive yet. Several important ancient civilizations have risen and fallen there, including the Merhgarh, Harappan, Indo-Aryan, Parthian and Kushan, each going through the classic cycle of growth, expansion, decadence and getting its flaccid butt kicked by reeking, hard-bodied, unwashed barbarian invaders who subsequently discovered the previous culture’s plumbing, built some of their own, started bathing and established a successor civilization where their descendents could grow soft and lazy, fat, dumb and slap-happy in preparation for the next wave of hardy, bloodthirsty barbarians to wash over the place and massacre them. On top of all that barbarian stuff, what’s more, throughout history, everybody who was anybody invaded what is now Pakistan – Greeks, Persians, Arabs, Huns, Mongols, Turks, you name it – if they were known for rape and plunder, they raped and plundered what is now Pakistan.
It’s the second most populous Moslem nation in the world, formerly part of British India, a colony conquered and run by our real good buddies the English, with whom we enjoy a special relationship in world diplomacy. What we now know as Pakistan came into existence in 1947, and a very violent partition of British India into Hindu and Moslem majority states quickly ensued. Pakistan used to have both East and West sectors, but in 1971, the Bengalis in East Pakistan got tired of being treated like dirt by the West Pakistanis, and also got very scared of being wiped out by the Indians during the Indo-Pakistani War, and so broke away, forming the infant nation of Bangladesh, which the entire world then proceeded to treat like dirt and let starve to death instead of getting killed by artillery, until George Harrison and a bunch of other rock stars got the Concert for Bangladesh together and did their thing, so now Bangladesh is cool and there’s almost enough food sometimes, too. So the country we now call Pakistan consists of what used to be West Pakistan, and it’s a member of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), the “D-8” developing countries conference, the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO), the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Group of Thirty Three Developing Nations (G33), the Group of Seventy Seven Nonaligned Nations (G77), the United Nations (UN), and, despite the fact that, ostensibly, it has a British-style parliament, the Sacred Council of Radical Occult Theocratic and Ulemic Moslem States (SCROTUMS). Pakistan used to be a member of the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) and the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO), but quit both of them when it was found that the British and Americans were exchanging Paki jokes over cocktails after the meetings (Example. Q: What do you get when you drop 25,000 Paki paratroopers? A: Air pollution). Since it was formed from a former British colony, between 1947 and 1956, Pakistan was also a Dominion of the British Commonwealth of Nations, just like Canada or Australia, for instance, but quit when Muhammad Ayub Khan revealed to the Government that W.O.G. means “Westernized Oriental Gentlemen,” not “Wonderful Old Guy,” as the British had always told them, and, furthermore, “Wog” is by no means considered an honorific in English culture. Decades of political turmoil followed, stabilized only by timely US diplomacy by the Department of State, discreet US covert operations by the Central Intelligence Agency, and a series of masterful coups conducted by the Pakistani military. It wasn’t until 1971 that democracy returned to Pakistan, lead by Benazir Bhutto’s dad, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. That lasted until 1976, when General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, who had a large and striking mustache, finally began taking orders from it. The moustache quickly directed ul-Haq to lead a coup, overthrowing democracy once again, and subsequently talked him into hanging Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, “just for the hell of it, more or less,” as the moustache subsequently explained during a debriefing interrogation to State Department diplomats when ul-Haq’s upper lip was detached and flung clear of the unfortunate airplane crash that killed him (and the US ambassador to Pakistan) in 1988, shortly after which democracy returned to Pakistan and Benazir Bhutto was elected prime minister. But while democracy was good in principle, it turned out to be kind of lame in practice, at least when a hundred million Pakis tried to do it, and Pakistan more or less slowly went down the toilet while Benazir took turns being prime minister with a bunch of Paki guys like Mia Muhammad Nawaz Sharif and Muhammad Rafiq Tarar, until 2001, when Pervez Musharraf’s moustache started talking to him. Since then, Pervez staged a huge coup that everybody agrees was a really good example of how, if one simply must do it, that sort of thing should be done, locked up Benazir under house arrest, then threw her out of the country, saved the Pakistani economy, such as it is, and exerted effective central government control over most of Pakistan. The problem part, the part Musharraf can’t control, is called the “tribal areas” region and runs along the Afghani border. People in the tribal areas region are not very nice, and consequently, American diplomats never go there. Other than the people in those places, the Pakistanis have been staunch allies in the War on Terror, and even helped the United States locate Osama bin Laden so that the State Department’s lawyers could determine that the Army couldn’t legally apprehend him in Pakistan, even though they had him cornered. Late in 2007, Musharraf’s moustache told him it was okay to allow Bhutto back into the country, as long as she never got out alive. So he did, and look what happened, just what Musharraf’s moustache said.
My host then politely ushered me into a meeting room, where the entire staff of the US State Department South Asia Desk was convened around a huge, highly polished rosewood table. To a man (and, truth be told, a couple of women, too), they were obviously nursing gargantuan hangovers. “Receptions,” the senior diplomat, who was apparently still drunk, explained. “Three of them. Last night, at the Indian, (hic) Sri Lankan and (hic) Afghani embassies.”
One of his fellow diplomats raised his head from the table slightly. “Aspirin? Anyone got some,” he murmured softly. “Anybody have any aspirin?”
I always carry such minor necessities in my briefcase, so after supplying that gentleman and several others with aspirin, ibuprofen or acetaminophen, as specified, I got down to business. “Where is the State Department’s contingency plan for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto?”
“What are you talking about?” A junior attache demanded as he looked up at me, goggle-eyed, “We didn’t do it!”
“No, no, that’s not what I meant,” I clarified. “I mean, where is the plan for what the United States will do, if – or, I am sad to say – when Benazir Bhutto is assassinated, as, I’m sure you ladies and gentlemen all know, she was, last Friday?”
The head of the South Asian desk shook his head solemnly. “I’m sorry, Mr. Collins, but the White House doesn’t allow the State Department to do that sort of thing any more.”
“They don’t?”
“Not since the last re-organization of the National Security Council. It’s all over in Langley at the CIA now.”
Therefore, on Monday, right around six-thirty in the morning, I drove through the gates of the CIA compound, just off the George Washington Parkway, and was escorted by a young lady wearing a Cornell ring and a Phi Beta Kappa key into a small theater, where she delivered a PowerPoint presentation on what the CIA knows about Pakistan. It was all classified Top Secret, of course, so I can’t say exactly what was in it. Not that I agree with the CIA that the contents of that briefing should be classified Top Secret, since I detected nothing in two hours of PowerPoint slides that can’t be looked up on the Internet, other than a few satellite night vision photos of what appears to be Osama bin Laden doing unspeakable things to a camel by moonlight on the outskirts of Peshawar in the company of several members of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence bureau. Anyway, my host subsequently ushered me into a meeting room, where several CIA agents and officers proudly demonstrated that they, too, know about as much concerning Pakistan as a ninth grader could look up on the Internet, and furthermore, had seen even spicier pictures of Osama bin Laden and ISI agents than I just had. Once that rigmarole came to its expected conclusion, I popped the Big Question again. “The White House took the whole thing out of our hands six months ago,” the head spook informed me sorrowfully, “they said they were afraid if it actually happened we might screw things up.”
So, yesterday, I was at the White House about nine a.m. A lovely young lady wearing a Yale ring gave me a PowerPoint presentation showing what the White House knows about Pakistan. It’s a big country, by most folk’s standards, and full of Moslem people at that. Most of them don’t like the United States very much, but their leader, Pervez Musharraf, is a regular, stand-up guy, just like our own dear president, George W. Bush, and by golly he seems to be doing a pretty good job of running Pakistan, which, after all, is full of jabbering savages in turbans, isn’t it? That can’t be an easy job. It took her three hours and over one hundred PowerPoint slides, but by Jumping Jiminy, when she was done, I sure understood what the White House knows about Pakistan.
Thus, it was no surprise when, after being politely ushered into the presence of the White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten, he matter-of-factly told me, in no uncertain terms, that “Pakistan’s a big country, by most folk’s standards, and full of Moslem people at that. Most of them don’t like the United States very much, but their leader, Pervez Musharraf, is a regular, stand-up guy, just like President Bush, and by golly he seems to be doing a pretty good job of running Pakistan, which, after all, is full of jabbering savages in turbans, isn’t it? That can’t be an easy job.”
“No, it’s hard to imagine it would be, Mr. Bolten,” I assured him as I got right down to the business at hand. “The CIA tells me, sir, that the White House has the United States’ contingency plan for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.”
“That we do,” Bolten said, picking up a cream laid envelope marked SECRET and embossed with the White House seal. “Prepared by senior White House staff, reviewed and signed off by the President himself.” Bolten handed it to me. I opened it, withdrawing a manila folder. Inside were a security cover sheet, chain of custody signature sheet, and a single page – a memorandum printed on White House stationery and signed by the President. Centered neatly between a heading that read “CONTINGENCY PLAN FOR UNITED STATES ACTIONS FOLLOWING AN ASSASSINATION OF BENAZIR BHUTTO” and the usual signature lines at the bottom was a lone, single sentence paragraph:
The National Security Council has determined that, in the event of a successful assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the White House should contact Tom Collins and ask him what to do.
Well, I was flattered, I guess. On the other hand, how else could they have gotten me to work straight through all of New Years Day while they sat on their butts watching football?