Musharraf Leaves White House in Lurch - NYT

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WASHINGTON, Nov. 3 — For more than five months the United States has been trying to orchestrate a political transition in Pakistan that would manage to somehow keep Gen. Pervez Musharraf in power without making a mockery of President Bush’s promotion of democracy in the Muslim world.

On Saturday, those carefully laid plans fell apart spectacularly. Now the White House is stuck in wait-and-see mode, with limited options and a lack of clarity about the way forward.

General Musharraf’s move to seize emergency powers and abandon the Constitution left Bush administration officials close to their nightmare: an American-backed military dictator who is risking civil instability in a country with nuclear weapons and an increasingly alienated public.

Mr. Bush entered a delicate dance with Pakistan immediately after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, when General Musharraf pledged his cooperation in the fight against Al Qaeda, whose top leaders, including Osama bin Laden, are believed to be hiding out in the mountainous border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The United States has given Pakistan more than $10 billion in aid, mostly to the military, since 2001. Now, if the state of emergency drags on, the administration will be faced with the difficult decision of whether to cut off that aid and risk undermining Pakistan’s efforts to pursue terrorists — a move the White House believes could endanger the security of the United States.

Adm. William J. Fallon, the senior American military commander in the Middle East, told General Musharraf and his top generals in Islamabad on Friday that he would put that aid at risk if he seized emergency powers.

But after the declaration on Saturday, there was no immediate action by the administration to accompany the tough talk, as officials monitored developments in Pakistan. Inside the White House the hope is that the state of emergency will be short-lived and that General Musharraf will fulfill his promise to abandon his post as Army chief of staff and hold elections by Jan. 15.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, traveling in the Middle East, called Mr. Musharraf’s move “highly regrettable,” while her spokesman, Sean D. McCormack, said the United States was “deeply disturbed.”

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/world/asia/04assess.html?_r=2&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin

So George... How's that, speading Democracy throughout the middle east, thing going for ya?

:shrug:

I see no signs that is the case. What they want is "stability" under pro-U.S. governments. They're not doing too well on that, either, but that's beside the point.

The fact is, we need General Musharraf as much as, if not more than, he needs us. The prospect of Pakistan's nukes falling into the hands of a Taliban-style regime with ties to al-Qaeda is dire enough that we'll stick with anyone who offers the prospect of preventing that scenario. To paraphrase the old quote, Musharraf is a son-of-a-bitch, but he's our son-of-a-bitch.

This development is a PR disaster, and the rest of the world (and many of us here), are having their worst fears further realized and confirmed.

:shrug: