This seems to be a season of jokers leading the pack – first we had Lalu Yadav in IIM and now we have General Pervez ‘Tactical Victory’ Musharraf selling his now declared best seller, ‘In the Line of Fire‘ much better than our cricketers sell their colas. The middle name refers to his jocular claim of having stole a tactical victory over India. We all knew the General was a brilliant tactician – especially in the maneuvers called ‘hasty-retreat’ and ‘about-face’, but today we also know that during his days as an SSG commando, he also learnt ‘left, right and center cuts’ ……from rear. (that’s boxing terminology sans the ‘center’ )
Richard Armitage and his ilk better be advised that bench-pressing 400 lbs and threats to bomb ‘Pakistan to the stone-ages’ will not intimidate the General, simply because of his patented maneuvers and also because Pakistan, for the most part is still in medieval ages.
So hilarious are his claims that Simon and Schuster’s (the book’s publishers) website have given out the location of Author Appearance for today (26 Sep 2006) as ‘Comedy Central Daily Show: Jon Stewart’ – LOL ). Oh yes, Pakistan too have their answer to Lalu.
But, hey, just as we realized Lalu’s potential as a business strategist (The Lalu Strategy: do NOT get in the way of professionals), we must acknowledge the General for selling his book single handedly – his case study at IIMs is due. He may not be a great President or military planner, but he certainly is an excellent marketing manager and a good actor – so his post-retirement job is almost guaranteed. Just imagine the General having his own talk show called ‘The Pakman’ (no relation to Pac-man, the digital monster).
All said and done, you can hate him or hate him but can never ignore General Musharraf.