Daily Times

Based on the novel of Hans Hellmut Kirst, the movie comes alive with a fascinating display of acting by the artists of the yesteryear with rare talents. It takes the viewers to the fateful era of the Second World War where, in the Nazi-controlled Poland, a German general (Peter O’Toole) slays a prostitute, incidentally herself a German agent. Finding some important clues, a conscientious police officer Major Grau (Omar Sharif) follows three suspects. While in hot pursuit, he seeks help from the French police chief giving him the names of those suspects to find the one who is the killer. The police chief smiles and replies sarcastically “but [why] only one, murder is the occupation of generals”.

During the mass movement against Mohamed Morsi, when generals were eager to issue ‘a roadmap to future’ expecting the outcome of a balance-of-power among the conflicting forces, Robert Fisk was quick to warn the protestors that “politicians are rogues, but generals can be killers” (FiskR, 2013). “Demands of 2011 revolution”, he added, “were not met but army holds no answer…Military rule would be more like the silly Junta who took over after Mubark”.

During cross-class movements when class-consciousness has not fully matured, for collective amnesia people forget the real enemy. While recalling history, Fisk jolted the memory of protestors, mentioning the plight of secular Algerians who supported their army in 1992 to forestall the electoral victory of Islamic salvation front. “The Algerian generals said the ‘national security’ of the state was in danger – the very words used by Egypt’s military leaders and there followed in Algeria a civil war that killed 250,000 people. The 2011 revolution’s demand for bread, freedom, justice and dignity has gone unanswered. Can the army satisfy these calls any more than Morsi, just by calling the demonstrations ‘glorious’?”

The history of underdeveloped nations is mostly the history of a vicious cycle where a civilian government is nothing more than a parenthesis between two dictatorships directly led or indirectly backed by the army. A saviour within or without a uniform is offered as a messiah. From pillows of illusion spreading like flakes, people walk from one dream to another to end up in a blind alley of nightmares. After every struggle when the possibility of approaching the dawn of liberation arises, the adventurers holding arms considering themselves as absolute wisdom not only punish the dreamers for seeing the dawn but slay their destiny as well.

Nations create armies to make their defenses impregnable but the dynamic of a nation state – based on competition driven by market forces to secure resources – turns the armies into an instrument of domination to pulverize the underdeveloped nations rich in resources. During and after the Cold war, NATO played an instrumental role in subjugating the nations that resisted the domination by refusing to surrender their resources through political wheeling and dealing. When political manipulation failed, the native armies were employed to impose the imperialistic dictates, and the modus operandi in nearly every case was the same; supporting the military coup to dislodge the non-conformist politicians. Even after the demise of the Soviet Union, the process is still in vogue despite the resilient nations lacking any tangible alternative.

It was 1954 when in Guatemala the native army backed by CIA overthrew Jacobo Arbenz, an elected popular president. The process even today is uninterrupted and continues throughout Latin America, either by overt violent aggression or by rigging the elections covertly. In Brazil, deposing the elected president Dilma Rousseff, by maligning her in the fictitious charges of corruption and later arresting Lula da Silva, a popular former president certain to win the polls again, on a false pretext and crowning a fascist as president are the textbook examples of flouting the sovereignty of a country. In recent times, Venezuela is facing the wrath and the same grotesque imperialistic shenanigans are in offing.

Pinochet in Chile, Rafel Videla in Argentina, General Humberto de Alencar in Brazil, the Somoza family in Nicaragua, Manuel Noriega in Panama, all usurped power through the barrel of the gun. Manuel Zelaya’s unceremonious removal in Honduras, several attempts to dislodge Chavez and now Maduro are but a few examples of enforcing a regime change in Latin America. The list of African revolutionary leaders, abhorred and assassinated by the army-CIA nexus, is too long! Patrice Lumumba, Amilcar Cabral, Thomas Sankara and Gaddafi were the leading lights among them. An attempt to empower the people instead of the elite linked to the Wall Street, an act of subversion inimical to the interests of the American corporations, was not forgiven -it set the precedence. Mosaddegh’s downfall in Iran, Suharto’s Indonesia massacre and the brutal regime of Zia in Pakistan are a few other examples worth mentioning. Prior to the innovation of preserving democracy, the pretext of intervention was corruption, disorder and shrieking economy. The reality was entirely different. It was neither the disorder nor the precarious situation of the economy nor any threat to democracy but the nationalization of state resources/assets causing a blow to the parasitic interests of the corporations that invited the scourge of the US.

Pretense of honesty and combating corruption, frequently heard excuses in a regime change, are interesting slogans. Capitalism is based on self-preservation, where time is money, people are a business, a reader in a library is a customer and the physicians are not professionals treating maladies but are health providers, a title that stinks of vulgarity associated with a procurer. That human beings are ‘things’ ignores that it is the human that experiences the world while things merely behave and are relevant in relation to humans alone. Everyone for himself is the capitalistic mode of salvation having all implements of corruption inherent in it.

In an exchange society, “people”, Laing says, “cannot be taught to love one another. It thus becomes necessary for the school to teach children how to hate without appearing to do so”. Under such a hateful system, “honesty seems largely to be a rationalization of vindictiveness” (Adorno). The honest man becomes the “projection of a punitive superego, the praise of his honesty, together with the repeated emphasis” on the strength of his character gives him a strong man’s image. “All fascist movements”, Adorno says, “employ traditional ideas and values but actually give them an entirely different, anti-humanistic meaning”.

All proverbial strong men claim to uphold traditional values and primitive institutions; the emphasis is on the restoration of puritanical religious values facing imminent danger from the secular or socialist forces. In reality, the whole idea rests upon achieving personal political gains by consolidating the property structure; one complements the other. This is how the corruption of the strong man is justified and purified. All strong men have clay feet. They may be successful in selling their paranoia but not for long. Finally, they are exposed. People come to know the truth but knowing the truth is attaining half the knowledge; expressing it as-it-is is its logical completion. Pakistan is undergoing an anarchic phase. The conflict in the ruling class has transcended all limits, and the possibility of a peaceful resolution is remote. People have to play their revolutionary role or else not only the ‘generals’, as Fisk warned, but the propertied class as a whole is a killer.

The writer is based in Australia and has authored books on socialism and history