forces in the middle eastWhat’s fascinating to me about the current mess in Pakistan is the position it puts the Bush Administration in. Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf has done what Dick Cheney only dares to dream about in his most private, fevered, late night wank-fantasies; a complete and total suspension of civil liberties, the shredding of Pakistan’s Constitution, the imprisonment of opposition figures, and a total shut-down of all but government sponsored news on the television.

Which basically means that the Pakistani people are being forced to watch nothing but their version of Pox News 24 hours a day, seven days a week. (Those poor, poor bastards.)

However, the Bush administration likes President Musharraf, who, in his dual role as president of Pakistan and Secretary in Chief of the Pakistani military has been more than willing to accept more than ten billion dollars in (documented) military aid since 9/11 (in spite of the fact that we have reason to believe that Pakistani intelligence services were instrumental in carrying out the attacks on that day).

Musharraf has been happy, however, to play ball in the “War on Terra”. From the Center for Foreign Relations:

How has Pakistan supported the ‘war on terrorism’?

By becoming a major U.S. partner and staging area for the war in Afghanistan. The United States considers Pakistan one of its most important allies in the “war on terror.” Pakistan granted overflight rights to coalition aircraft, let U.S. forces use two Pakistani airfields, and shared intelligence about suspected terrorists. Pakistan has also worked with the FBI to capture suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban fugitives who fled into northern Pakistan—including al-Qaeda operations chief Abu Zubaydah and the alleged September 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Muhammad—and in some cases has committed its own troops to hunt down al-Qaeda holdouts. According to the State Department’s 2004 Country Report, “Pakistan continues to pursue al-Qaeda and its allies aggressively through counterterrorist police measures and large-scale military operations.”

In other words, they’ve been just as willing as the US to do forced renditions, to violate international law, and deprive “terror suspects” of any form of legal or human rights. It’s just that up until this last weekend, the Bushies were able to pretend that Pakistan is a functioning democracy, in spite of the fact that Musharraf is a military dictator who seized power in 1999 in an armed coup d’etat and has managed thus far to fend off any other claimants to Pakistan’s reins of power.

Musharraf is doing exactly what President Bush was chiding the leaders of Burma for doing just a few weeks ago, which puts the US in an…interesting position regarding Pakistan’s current crisis. NPR’s Senior News Analyst Daniel Schorr had a blistering essay on today’s “All Things Considered” that holds BushCo’s Middle East policies up to the light and says that “Freedom” is pretty thin on the ground in the region and things are getting worse every day.

The money paragraph:

There are other setbacks on the “Democracy/Stability” front in the Middle East. Turkey, a model of democracy, is threatening armed incursion into Iraq to root out Kurdish guerrillas seeking an independent Kurdistan. That could destabilize the elected government of Iraq.

Which was already so goddamn stable I could just puke.

In Lebanon, another once-promising democracy, running for president is almost tantamount to running for assassination by Syria’s henchmen. And in the Israeli/Palestinian areas, Secretary Rice is fighting an uphill battle to stitch together a peace conference in Annapolis later this month…or maybe next. A self-selected International Crisis group including Zbigniew Brzezinski, Lee Hamilton, and Brent Scowcroft has warned that failure in this peace effort risks devastating consequences.

Add to that Beltway psychopaths like Joe Lieberman agitating for a shooting war with Iran, and it becomes abundantly clear that the Bush Administration wants “Stability and Freedom in the Middle East” about like Britney Spears wants a copy of the AA Big Book and custody of her children.

Maybe President Bush and his fellow foaming lunatic friends really do believe that they are working to bring peace and stability to the planet’s most volatile region, but (as in all BushCo initiatives), the result is the usual Republican clusterfuck, just like their policies regarding health care for children and veterans (1.7 million American veterans lack health insurance of any kind), education initiatives like No Child Left Alive, tax cuts for wealthy Americans that have left our national coffers bare and our economy a shambles, and pretty much anything else that Der Chimpenfuhrer has exposed to his reverse-Midas touch, by which everything he touches turns into a massive steaming pile of offal.

Well, you have to hand them one thing. Republicans are certainly consistent in their failures. They can consistently be relied upon to be dishonest, greedy, corrupt, grasping, incompetent, sexually perverse, morally bankrupt losers.

Bless their hearts.

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