Afghan War got you down? Worried after watching Charlie Rose that the chief military advisor to the White House is as barking mad as the last one?

Take one reading of advice from the inimitable "(Ret.) Maj. Butt" to young aspiring Pakistani strategic analysts and call me in the morning. One reading -- two readings might keep you up all night laughing, then you'd be cussing me tomorrow.

How to Become A Strategic Analyst Like Yours Sachly

Thanks, Major, for restoring my sense of humor, which I lost somewhere along the way this past week while reviewing how Operation Enduring Freedom became Operation Hodgepodge.

Pundita falls in love with a Pakistani attorney. I hope his goats and cousins don't mind. (UPDATED 2:00 PM)

UPDATE
Crikey! The guy has a fan club. Received the following from a reader whose opinion I respect. Glad to see from his note that my snap judgment in this case was sound. And it seems the blogger in question is a male whose name, or at least pen name, might actually be Major:

"Falling in love" isn't just a manner of speaking when it comes to the Major. It's funny how disproportionately many mash notes he gets from both boys & girls in his blog posts. For desis [South Asians] his pitch-perfect sendup of our accents and locution is an added treat. Personally, I hate the fellow's guts, since he writes the way I can only fantasize about. :-)

The lad's a genius, and that's all there's to it.

*************

I might regret this, but on the strength of only two of his essays (Strapping the suicide vest on the Kashmir issue and Birth of a Liberal Pakistan!! (approximately after 70 years of screwing) I'm placing an anonymous Pakistani's blog on the Pundita blogroll. I hope he'll use the sudden fame wisely. (In what may be a sign of lurking gender bias this female blogger assumes the blogger is male.)

Thanks to the same reader who sent a link to Margaret Bourke-White's report on Pakistan (see today's earlier post) for alerting me to the blog, which is titled Major Bearls Oph Wisdom: Goat droppings oph Wisdom.

All I've gleaned about the blog's author is that he seems to be a Pakistani attorney who lives in Pakistan. An anonymous blogger myself, I'm not irritated by his blog's completely uninformative "About" section:

Some post are by me, and some posts are the commentaries of my fourth cousin thrice remove (twice by ISI and once by CIA). ...

Don't let the botched English fool you; this is a brilliant and well-informed thinker, an intellectually honest one as a commenter notes, with an excellent command of English.

Any fool can be well informed and brilliant, although I'll grant that intellectual honesty is harder to come by; what sets Pearls apart is the author's stealth sense of humor, which he uses to laugh absurd arguments to death.

I'm on the fence about trying to entice you to read Pearls by providing quotes from the author's essays. I don't want to spoil your fun (although I'd advise Americans to read Birth of a Liberal Pakistan first). And I don't want to scare off American opinion experts on Pakistan, who find themselves at sea with arguments that are shorn of political and strategic agendas.

The only agenda I can see about the blog is that the author is trying to bring Pakistan's intellectuals to their senses. I add that the author's agenda could work wonders for the Pentagon, U.S. Department of State, Congress and White House, but I've concluded that Washington has no interest in being sensible about Pakistan. The same observation goes double for the other powerful members of NATO.

On a personal note, reading the Pearls essays was therapeutic for me. I've been accused of having a good sense of humor but there's nothing like realizing that one's government is paying another to bump off soldiers in one's military to turn humor into corrosive bitterness. At least that's been my experience.

Reading Pearls sharply reminded me that I'm not the only person taking full account of evil and stupidity run riot, and that I need to find ways to get across my points other than sputtering to my fellow Americans that we're all going straight to hell.

That I need to find other ways doesn't mean I will; the New Year has done little to lift my dark mood. But Pearls has struck a match in the darkness.

Okay; here are a few lines from Birth of a Liberal Pakistan !! in which the author skewers laments by Pakistan's self-proclaimed liberals that Salmaan Taseer's killing represented the death of liberalism in Pakistan. He drives home his argument by pointing out that Pakistan's liberals have never had much to say about Pakistan's bonded laborers:

[...] Salman’s taseer assassination, wimmens and gentlemards, heralds the arrival of an egalitarian Pakistan!

“But Why!” you pooch?

Here is why. Liberalism, wimmens and gentlemards, is a belief in social justice rooted in individual liberty and equal rights. So how did social justice and equal rights prevalent before Salman Taseer’s assassination die on that day? Actually it didnt. Before going back to the begining, for dramatic effect let me start with the end. The day Salman taseer got assasinated, the elite suddenly realized that they cannot do what they wished, such as down a few or have their way with the blasphemy law, without the danger of their incensed security guard or domestic help firing off a clip in their direction. This, I suspect, the aforementioned muddle headed donkey has mistaken for the death of “liberalism”. What has instead died, I humbly submit, is the power over the common man which was usurped and weilded for so long by the elites.

And that is because power has been democratized. And that is because everyone has a gun. Ergo, the power to shape the future and destiny of Pakistan, which used to lie with the elites is suddenly with the masses. Because every one of them has a gun, and unlike the elites, they seem quite comfortable firing it to protect their beliefs.

A round of applause for AK-facilitated egalitarianism!!

So what of this elusive little-understood animal (like the Yeti and “Silent Majority” of Pakistan) called Liberalism? More importantly what is and why Liberalism? Liberalism wimmens and gentlemards, among other things, is to ensure social mobility and equal participation in governance. And social mobility in yesteryears depended on access to capital producing goods. Like Land. Ergo, if Liberalism had existed before Salman Taseer’s assasination, Land reforms would have been implmented. Pray tell me how did that go? As you would have guessed:

Fantastically!! We had the Provincial Tenancy Act of 1950!!

Since yours sachly fancies himself as a story teller more than a lawyer (and is allergic to the word “WHEREAS” in all caps that every legal document seems to have) instead of describing the law, let me tell you a story. There are 1.7 million landless agricultural workers in Pakistan and in January 2002 The honorable High court of Sindh dismissed petitions for the release of bonded laborers citing this very same act and declaring bonded laborers to be a “dispute” between Landlords and peasants. Covered by the Tenancy act. So much for equal rights and social mobility based on capital producing goods. So, did the “liberalism” enabled by tenancy act die with Salman Taseer’s assassination?

No!

Did the egalitarianism of the threat of a few peasants banding together, declaring their landlord to be a blasphemer and shooting him in the head become a real possibility after Salman Taseer’s assasination?

Emphatic yes!!

So wimmens and gentlemards, I submit that egalitarianism has taken birth!!

Let us take the second aspect of social mobility. Education. The less said about this, the better.
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