Achieving Our Country: Reprinted from Blawgletter® - Open Letter: US Should Support Pakistani Lawyers and Rule of Law

The promise of the United States,

its vision and ideals, as set forth in its founding documents (the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America) are best understood as "works in progress." The United States' failure throughout its history to live up to the lofty standards codified in those founding documents in no way lessens their meaning, nor their value. The good that the United States has in fact achieved since 1776 has served to reinforce the idea of a country striving, by design, to be better than its all-too-human and very imperfect nature. Most important, those ideals exist as real, true things that We, the People can achieve. It's the hopeful intent of this site to discuss and facilitate ways of actually achieving our nation, and thereby continue to form, as the Constitution exhorts, a more perfect union.

The title ''Achieving Our Country''

is drawn from the famous last sentence of James Baldwin's ''Fire Next Time.'' There, Baldwin called on the saving remnant, ''the relatively conscious whites and the relatively conscious blacks,'' to ''end the racial nightmare, and achieve our country, and change the history of the world.'' The point of invoking James Baldwin, of course, is that he was entirely unforgiving of his country's sins and still looked forward with hope to a better future. A left that fights for the political and economic changes that will ''achieve our country'' is the left that the United States once possessed and needs as much as ever, but is hardly to be seen.
--from a book review: "The New New Left"
by Alan Ryan

10 March 2008

Reprinted from Blawgletter® - Open Letter: US Should Support Pakistani Lawyers and Rule of Law

November 06, 2007

General Musharraf ordered his forces to beat and jail protesting lawyers.

Blawgletter can't recall writing an open letter before, but the courageousness of judges and lawyers in Pakistan impelled us to compose our first.

To President George W. Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and Attorney General-Elect Michael B. Mukasey:

In the British Empire's American colonies, the King of England suspended laws, fired judges, and ignored court judgments. He put citizens in jail, ransacked their homes, read their private papers, and shot public protesters. He was a tyrant.

History repeats itself today in another fomer British colony, Pakistan, where a modern King George III assumed the powers of the crown on Saturday. Unlike other countries in the Middle East, including Iraq and Afghanistan, Pakistan has fragile but longstanding democratic traditions, including an independent judiciary. But its President, General Pervez Musharraf, dissolved the Supreme Court after learning that the justices were about to void his third term as President, ruling him ineligible for election while acting as the military chief. The general also suspended the Constitution and delayed elections indefinitely. Plus he ordered his security forces to threaten, detain, and beat up the thousands of Pakistani lawyers who have taken to the streets to object. The gendarmes followed Musharraf's directive with gusto -- cracking lawyers' heads and putting judges under house arrest.

American lawyers, like our Pakistani counterparts, draw wills, close home purchases, defend against traffic tickets, and counsel businesses and families. Many represent companies and individuals in disputes. But all of us know a threat to the rule of law when we see it. And we see a big one in Pakistan.

Our brave colleagues in Pakistan are fighting to save a democracy. They are trying to rally the Pakistani people against despotism. They are telling the powerful that the rule of law is so precious and so fundamental to democracy that they will risk their careers, their freedom, and their lives to protest its subversion.

We can only hope we would be so brave. Can we do more?

Yes. We can, and do, urge our President, Secretary of State, and Attorney General-Elect to say plainly that the United States condemns General Musharraf's acts and demands an immediate restoration of constitutional democracy. Release the judges, restore them to their benches, and obey the courts' lawful decrees. Reinstate the Pakistani Constitution. Allow peaceful protests. And proceed with elections, on schedule, in January 2008.

Our own fidelity to the rule of law requires at least that.

If you agree with our sentiments, please send your own email -- with some, all, or none of our text, as you choose -- to president@whitehouse.gov and askdoj@usdoj.gov. Sorry, we don't have an email address for the State Department.

Barry Barnett