Of Monks and Lawyers

What do monks and lawyers have in common? At first sight, you may say very little. One group cultivates the spirit; the other gathers gold. In South Asia, though, they do have something in common: opposition to military dictatorship. Pakistani lawyers were out on the streets months before Burmese monks did the same. Both have been met with an iron fist.

Here the similarity ends. In Burma, the monks are the good guys, with whom Brown and Bush are happy to associate and to deliver homilies to their tormentors. In Pakistan, the lawyers are on the wrong side. They are opposing a good guy, our military man.

Let those Western leaders who like to sit on a pedestal to lecture the wrong sorts of dictators know that such ironies are not lost on people.