According to a Press report Musharraf has bought a nest in Australia for his residence. What a strategy The Taliban must be extremely depressed. They have been hunting for Musharraf up and down the country for years. Sometimes they were within an ace of hooking him. But the Commando most craftily dodged them. Australia is surrounded by wide seas and is very thinly populated. Hunting for Musharraf in such an inhospitable wilderness would be almost impossible for the Taliban. Poor Taliban However, there was a more secure asylum in the world. Musharraf could have settled in the North or the South Pole. Had he flown there and had the Taliban got the news, they would have instantaneously dustbinned all their Musharraf-catching plans. And what a glorious redemption it would have been for Musharraf The Taliban would have consoled themselves by murmuring: "Now we must wait. We would capture him on the Day of Judgement." As a president, Musharraf carved a place for himself in history. As a settler in the Poles he would have carved a place for himself in geography. If Musharraf did fly to Australia as a settler, would his political cronies be grieved? Only the cronies know. But what would he himself feel? Let's not ask stupid questions. Washington has been hunting for Osama for years. Musharraf cooperated with the hunters. The cooperation was horrifically misused by Washington. It was meant only for Osama-hunting. Unfortunately, Washington rained bombs almost all over Afghanistan. Perhaps America believed that Osama's body was the size of Afghanistan. Thousands upon thousands of innocent Afghan men, women and children were killed. Washington smelt the carcasses and enjoyed the smell. Musharraf had to pay for the cooperation. He could no longer abide in Pakistan. For what he did for Washington, Washington ought to have offered him asylum in America. It was Washington's moral obligation. Had Musharraf declined the offer, Washington ought to have smuggled him to America as a respectable guest. But no American would not allow its political activities to be polluted by morality. When Musharraf decrowned himself, the masses were jubilant. They were extremely optimistic that things would start improving phenomenally at a phenomenal rate. Unfortunately, they were soon disappointed. Things have been worsening at the rate of a cruise missile. Actually, Pakistan is a political cockpit where our political cocks keep fighting and the masses keep biting themselves out of sheer frustration. Musharraf was about to retire. He had already given the most vigorous years of his life to his gun. He was a successful commando. One day he was flying home from abroad when mysteriously certain things blew out of the blue. He became a politician. He married presidency. It was a forced marriage and on top of it his second marriage. Obviously, he committed bigamy for which he was condignly punished. Unfortunately, his performance as a political commando extremely disappointed the masses. They forced him to divorce his second mate. Our politics is the mother of all our woes and ordeals. Our salvation kies in divorcing the mother. Not only in Pakistan, in most of the countries of the world the misery of the masses is a gift of the politicians. But is there an alternative to the politicians. Plato comes to our rescue. He declares that unless philosophers become rulers and those who are ruling become philosophers, there can be respite for mankind. Thus only philosophers as rulers can transmute our political hell into a blissful paradise. The havoc which our past rulers inflicted upon the masses was the consequence of the sad fact that they were not philosophers. Had they been philosophers and been succeeded by philosophers, Pakistan would have become the envy of the world. Anyway forget about our political past. But we can ask all the candidates who are currently running for the presidency to prove that they are genuine philosophers and not commercial politicians. Plato is confident that even when a philosopher is forced to be ruler, he would do for the country what no commercial politician would do. Since, according to Plato a non-philosopher cannot be a beneficent ruler, Musharraf is lucky that he was not born in Plato's age. Obviously, Plato is a conspirator against the professional politicians. The politicians must ensure that Plato is expunged from all the textbooks of philosophy being used in colleges and universities. Unfortunately, politicians inflict themselves as rulers upon the masses through the ballot-box. So far, in Pakistan the ballot-box has turned out to be a Pandora's box for the masses. It ominously looks like a miniature coffin. The writer is an academic