Pakistan

Ann Coulter on Musharraf

I like reading Ann Coulter's because of her wit and writing style. Watching her on TV is painful however since she interviews the same way she writes. It makes her sound like a conspiracy theorists with ADA.

I have to say I totally disagree with several of her conclusions in this article which is apparently demonstrating her neo-con leanings. I disagree with her spin on the democrats position in this area. I do not think that they have any of the motivations or ideals that she states they have. My own conclusion is that the foreign policy of the democrats for the last 30 or so years has been to wait to see what the GOP leadership position is on an issue and deride it as being the wrong approach to achieve the exact same solution. The democrats want us in as much of a perpetual state of war as the neo-cons, right now they don't hold the presidency, so what the Bush administration does they will decry it as the wrong solution. When the dems are back in power, the republicans will go back to doing the exact same thing.

There is just so much to go after in this article it's not even funny:

The entire history of Pakistan is this: There are lots of crazy people living there, they have nuclear weapons, and any Pakistani leader who prevents the crazies from getting the nukes is George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison all rolled into one.

This is an interesting analysis since Pakistan developed nukes under the prior regime of which Musharraf was a member, before he ousted them in a coup. A bunch of Islamic crazies didn't do it, his buddies did it before he stabbed them in the back. And when they did it, we basically did nothing to stop them or admonish them. And once he took power, he did nothing to dismantle or destroy the weapons. He just sat on them.

Now the technology has now apparently made it over to Iran directly from Pakistan and so we are now threating to invade Iran even though they don't have the weapons yet. Why didn't we do the same for Musharraf when he thumbed his nose at us, the U.N., and the non-proliferation treaty (you know, the things we are using as excuses to invade Iran)? Because even though he is a thug, he is our thug. For now at least.

Musharraf has been a crucial ally of ours since Sept. 12, 2001. His loyal friendship to the United States while governing a country that is loyal to al-Qaida might prove dispiriting to the terrorists.

As I recall, Musharraf refused to help us initially when we wanted to attack the Taliban in Afghanistan. That is why we are still using bases from the former Soviet republics is Asia. For this completely lack of cooperation, we forgave billions in Pakistan's debt and gave him approximately $2 billion per year since 2001. This is not loyalty. It is a mix of extortion and welfare. By the way, he hasn't done a thing to shut down the Islamist schools and all intelligence reports indicate that bin Laden has been hiding in his country virtually since day one. All of our reports also indicate that the Pakistan secret service is riddled with Taliban and bin Laden sympathizers, which is why his help as yielded no results. So since he has no control over several regions and segments of his population or Islamic extremists who basically live as independent enclaves, his solution is to lock up all the remaining secular Muslims who want to restore Pakistan to a democracy.

Remember democracy? That is supposedly the latest reason why we need to stay in Iraq. We just can't afford to have it in one of the few Muslim nations with a democratic tradition.

Now, with the surge in Iraq working, Democrats are completely demoralized. Al-Qaida was counting on them. (We know the surge in Iraq is working because it is no longer front page news.)

The surge is not working in Iraq. The casualty rates are as high as ever. The difference now is that the media has stopped sensationalizing it since it may hurt the chances of the democratic front-runners who want to keep us in Iraq until at least 2013.

You wouldn't know it to read the headlines, but Musharraf has not staged a military coup. In fact, he was re-elected — in a landslide — just weeks ago under Pakistan's own parliamentary system.

Wow, the unelected leader who has controlled Pakistan as a military despot since he overthrew the last democratically elected government won in a landslide. I'm sure this had nothing to do with him being the supreme leader of the country through military force and shutting down all the opposition parties and media outlets prior to the election.

But the Pakistani Supreme Court, like our own Supreme Court, believes it is above the president and refused to acknowledge Musharraf's election on the grounds that he is disqualified because he is still wearing a military uniform. That's when Musharraf sent them home.

Perhaps it is because they were reading their constitution, a document which neo-cons find offensive when you bring it to their attention in discussing the role of our government.

Musharraf's election was certainly more legitimate than that of Syrian president Bashar Assad (with whom every leading Democrat has had a photo-op) or Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (adjunct professor at Columbia University) or Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez (loon).

Wow. This really warms my heart about Musharraf. She has certainly placed him in the right company in this paragraph even if she doesn't see the irony.

Pakistan is a country where local Islamic courts order women to be raped as punishment for the crimes of their male relatives. Among the Islamists' bill of particulars against Musharraf is the fact that he has promoted the Women's Protection Bill, which would punish rape, rather than using it as a device for social control.

This situation exists precisely because Musharraf has been doing absolutely nothing since 9/11 to reign in Islamic fundamentalists in his own backyard. He is the world's best paid welfare recipient. I suppose Coulter thinks the if Bhutto takes over she would be in favor of this type of treatment for women? No, but Bhutto has never proven to be our thug.