Pardon me for repeating it for the third time, but by singing paeans of a spectacular victory achieved by the security forces in Balochistan, the Pakistan army’s media wing Inter Services Public Relations [ISPR] has yet once again reaffirmed its absolute faith in the stratagem of acting boastfully about something one ought to be ashamed about mentioned in Joseph Heller’s famous anti-war fictional novel Catch 22 set in the closing days of World War II.

In this novel, there’s an incident in which the anti-hero Yossarian on a bombing mission is so scared by the enemy’s flak that he fails to drop his bombs and so he decides to go over the target the second time. Though he manages to destroy the target, making a second pass over the target gives the enemy the opportunity to shoot down another bomber accompanying him, killing its entire crew.

Colonel Cathcart who is commanding the bomber group is livid as mentioning that his bombers went over the target twice was something that he felt “Looks lousy on the report” and is worried as to “how am I going to cover up something like this in the report.” When Yossarian suggests that he be given a medal, Cathcart rightly tells him that “you’ll be lucky if we don’t give you a court-martial.” But the ambitious Colonel is more worried about the inevitable embarrassment that this incident would cause.

Luckily, Colonel Cathcart’s deputy Colonel Korn comes up with a........

© Eurasia Review