"Concern" is all we can muster

Let's not kid ourselves. The Bush administration has not intention of annoying Musharraf in any way. They've bet the farm on him in combating al Qaeda where it actually is - Afghanistan - to the point where he can do nothing that they will do more than express "concern" over.

This should come as no surprise. Back when Bush was running for president the first time he said that it wasn't important that Musharraf had overthrown a democratically elected Prime Minister in a coup d'etat; no, what was important was that Musharraf was "in charge" and the country was "stable". This, from a man who a few months later told us he'd seen Putin's soul and knew he could work with him, should have been a clear message. Bush doesn't give a rat's ass about "democracy around the world": he only cares about America - perhaps its safety, perhaps its hegemony, certainly his vision of it as a shining City of Good on some Hill somewhere...

So we'll continue to pour billions (yes, with a B; over $11 billion in the last six years) of dollars into Pakistan and "hope that we'll get some clarification on the intentions of the government in the next few days." (As if clarification is actually needed...) And it's not even like Musharraf has actually used that money to fight al Qaeda. Instead, he's ramped up his conventional forces - the kind he'd use to fight, oh, say, India, and let the Taliban essentially carve out a little country for themselves in Pakistan's frontier country.

Remember Bush's Second Inaugural Address? The one where he warned regimes that were our allies that America "'would require the decent treatment of their own people"? That's okay; he obviously didn't mean it.

Worse, of course, is that if Pakistan goes up in flames as a relatively large and liberal population has enough of tyranny and rises against it, our supposed "worst nightmare" - WMD in the hand of al Qaeda - is far more likely to become a reality than in just about any other set of circumstances. Hey, what about Iran?, you ask. Please. Shiite Iran has no interest in providing Sunni extremists and fanatics with weapons that would be used against them - apostate Muslims are worse than non-Muslims, and the Wahabbis of al Qaeda consider the Shiites worse than non-human. An occasional IED, maybe, but a nuke - even if Iran had nukes? (And even people like Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns know Iran doesn't even have a program to get nukes: "Iran is seeking a nuclear capability . . . that some people fear might lead to a nuclear-weapons capability," Burns said last month. No wonder Bush is casting Iran's knowledge of how to get nukes as the threat of WW III...) No. Pakistan has nukes. And nukes in a country in chaos, a country where al Qaeda pretty much runs tame: that's a threat.

But Bush's State Department is just voicing "concern" and "hopes" and stating that we can't afford to offend Musharraf. Which is what we've done with him since he came to power. Four months ago Bush said this:

"Musharraf is a strong ally in the war against these extremists. I like him and I appreciate him. I'm, of course, constantly working with him to make sure that democracy continues to advance in Pakistan. He's been a valuable ally in rejecting extremists. And that's important, to cultivate those allies."

So, how's that advancing democracy looking now, eh?

Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist, wrote this yesterday for the Washington Post:

"President Pervez Musharraf's declaration of emergency rule this weekend will only encourage further civil strife, nationwide protests and greater territorial gains by the extremist Pakistani Taliban.... Despite U.S. expectations it is unlikely that Musharraf will use his new powers to step up a military offensive in the north. His first concern is political survival. More likely are a flurry of truces and shaky peace deals with the Pakistani Taliban that will leave them in place. As a timely sop to the Pentagon, the arrests of a few high-level leaders of the Afghan Taliban and perhaps an al-Qaeda leader are possible. But the extremists know that the Pakistani state has been irretrievably weakened and that this is the moment to push their offensive.

The key question Musharraf faces is how long the army will continue to back him. Rank-and-file soldiers are keenly aware of the widening gulf between them and the public they are supposed to protect. The army, already demoralized, is unwilling to fight a never-ending war against its own people.

For now, the judges are gone, the media has been censored, the opposition and lawyers jailed and curtailed. But Musharraf's emergency is not sustainable. Ruling by force without any political support will prove impossible.

The international community has only belatedly realized that Pakistan is a haven for terrorism, nuclear proliferation and Islamic radicalism. Afghanistan's stability and the fate of 40,000 U.S. and NATO soldiers depend on what happens in Pakistan. The spread of anti-Western feelings and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism have been fostered by a U.S. policy that has sought to prop up Musharraf rather than forcing him to seek political consensus and empower a representative civilian government that would have public support for attacking the extremists."

But Bush can't go back on anything he's done.

What's he said he'll do is easily dealt with: he just redefines what's he done to make it fit. How else can you explain talking about "mak[ing] sure that democracy continues to advance in Pakistan"? Not to mention the whole Iraqi WMD fiasco...

But what he's actually done he'll defend to the end.

And that end is likely to be prolonged, bloody, and result in America's further loss of stature in the world community.