Yes, I understand that. I know that Pervy did not come to the presidency honestly, and that he has thrown at least 700 of his opponents in prison in the last few weeks. To me, Pervy’s uniform is only a symbol. He could wear a tutu, and still be head of military (though a poofy one.) The US is a rarity in having one person serving as head of state, head of military, and head of party.
Our whole relationship with Pakistan is swimming in silliness. They’re a “strong ally in the fight against terrorism,” but Osama bin Laden lives there unmolested, (or a few hundred yards away in Afghanistan, another “ally.”) Pervy’s an iron-fisted dictator with nuclear weapons, but our president calls him up pal-to-pal, to give some friendly advice.
Update: Musharraf has announced an end to the state of emergency. However, the restrictions on the media remain in place, and the judges purged from the Supreme Court have not been reinstated and remain under house arrest. And during the emergency, Musharraf added a clause to the constitution stating that his actions since November 3 “shall not be called in question by or before any court.”
Until this morning, the two people with the best chance of replacing Musharraf as head of Pakistan were Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto, both of them former democratically elected prime ministers of Pakistan. Neither is an “unknown devil” nor likely to head a “Taliban-style regime.”
This is exactly the level of ignorance that plagues our foreign policy makers.
I think that’s pretty much spot on. The polls I’ve seen show that only about 15% of the populace supports the kind of radical Islam being sold by the Taliban and similar groups. It is possible, though not likely, that some crazy, radical group could take over the country in some sort of coup, but I think it extremely unlikely that democracy would lead to that. Radical Islam seems to flourish best under autocratic rule. Whether Musharraf is an autocrat might be debatable, but he certainly doesn’t represent democracy.