Did anyone even know there was such a thing as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization? I certainly didn’t. It seems the Organization is yet another multi-national pacts, though this one is less like the EU and more like NATO.
Well, it turns out that this group includes China (duh), Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. Nations looking to join this group include our buddies Iran and Pakistan. The admission or denial of these states is at least one item on the agenda for their current meeting, happening right now. There are concerns, as one might expect, about the United States’ response to adding those members in what is at least on paper an alliance of military proportions.
It might be illuminating, when viewing world affairs, to keep this coalition in mind. For a start, it’s worth considering the fact that neither Iran nor Pakistan feels compelled to join in any similar coaltions with Middle Eastern nations. . . because of course, they are ethnically and historically separate regions.
Of course, how trite of me to have a New Year’s Resolutions list, eh? But then, the start of a new year, like any mathematically or biologically significant milestone in the wheel of life, is a good time to reflect on what has been and what you hope should be. I’ve never ascribed to the concept of “resolutions,” in the sense of those silly promises you know you can’t keep. Rather, I prefer to take the opportunity to look out on the new cycle and set some long-term goals which have at least the appearance of achievability, and those whose aim it is to make me just a little bit better off than I was before.
And so, for the sake of both reflection and anticipation, I commit my most relevant political resolutions for the coming year:
1. I resolve to remind myself that “sovereignty” is not a word important only to the United States.
All too often in the discussion of the War on Terror, our entire dialogue happens in the absence of this very basic fact. I thought about this again while watching Pumpkin Head in the last Sunday morning of the Old Year, questioning politicians about the situation in Pakistan. I regret to say that Mike Huckabee did better with his answer than did Barack Obama. But both politicians and Tim Russert all seemed to forget that Pakistan, for all the aid we might have provided them, is still a sovereign nation. When Barack Obama says we need to “be sure” that elections in Pakistan are fair, well, the fact is that we don’t have the right to make that call. We tend to forget that while we get all wrapped up in our own problems.
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Looks as though there are many among Bhutto’s supporters who blame Musharraf for the killing. Pakistan is a largely moderate nation, despite the impression you might get from watching American news, but this kind of thing has the ability to boil over into unpredictable things in most any country:
BBC NEWS | South Asia | Benazir Bhutto killed in attack
The explosion occurred close to an entrance gate of the park in Rawalpindi where Ms Bhutto had been speaking.Wasif Ali Khan, a member of the PPP who was at Rawalpindi General Hospital, said she died at 1816 (1316 GMT).
Supporters at the hospital began chanting “Dog, Musharraf, dog”, the Associated Press (AP) reports.
