Incessant Gibbers

“Pakistan launches major offensive against Taliban hideouts” - this is the first news item at my homepage of Yahoo!. A couple of days back the PM and his cabinet gave full authority to the Army Chief for the use of force in the region to maintain peace. The use of force has begun after a brief hiatus. Citing threats to Peshawar as one of the major reasons, the Interior Ministry and the government, in general, are defending their actions and are trying to give various reasons to prepare the people for another battle in tribal belt. This same bunch of people, and the defense analysts (now called the government) were critical of Pervez Musharraf and the previous government of PML-Q for doing just this. They lured the people into believing that the Army is attacking the citizens of Pakistan, and what not.

Now, the same thing is happening again. Is this somehow legitimate because the government is elected? Was Pervez Musharraf not a farsighted person then, who could foresee a bigger threat, as it is claimed now, and he tried to clamp the surge in militancy with the use of force? He was labeled military-minded for doing this. What has changed now that the use of force is unavoidable? Despite claims of talks to ease out the situation, the government has realized that there is no way out of this, without the use of force. The army is given the authority (as if it never had), ohh! why will army decide? Did the House vote for this? Was this even brought to the Parliament? Wasn’t this the issue that the Parliament should decide and not the Army? It was, then, but not now. Why? Because the viewpoint changes with the seating arrangement in the Parliament.