ConservativeINC

I know we’ve heard this before but Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf is saying that he will indeed be quitting his post as general. But emergency rule is still in place.

President Gen. Pervez Musharraf said for the first time Wednesday that he expects to quit as chief of Pakistan’s army by the end of November, heralding a return to civilian rule.

But in an interview with The Associated Press, he also rejected U.S. pressure to quickly end a state of emergency and a demand from opposition leader Benazir Bhutto that he leave the political stage altogether.

Musharraf said rising Islamic militancy required him to stay in control of the troubled nation but he left the door open for future cooperation with Bhutto if she wins January parliamentary elections.

“All those who are blunt enough to tell me to my face what the reality is, all of them think, yes, it will lead the country to chaos if I do not handle the political environment now with me remaining as the president,” Musharraf said.

It’s not enough to say that Pakistan is at a crossroads. They’re in a maze where any wrong turn can lead the country to ruin. Democracy is trying to get a foothold in the Islamic nation and so are the terrorists. Opposition parties from Pakistan’s bad old days are coming back with support from the West. No matter what Musharraf ends up doing he is going to continue to be castigated by his opposition at home and by pundits on cable news shows.

Pakistan’s biggest problem right now is security. They need emergency rule because terror groups have taken control of an ever increasing amount of land within its borders. But that doesn’t seem to matter to the news sources I read. What they occupy their pages with is Benazir Bhutto.

She has come out today with an editorial, Musharraf’s Electoral Farce, that puts all the blame squarely on Musharraf’s shoulders. While comparing present-day Pakistan with the Cold War Soviet Union she lays out a pretty damning picture of what is going on in Pakistan. Thousands of civilians are being arrested because they oppose Musharraf, the Supreme Court has basically been neutered, and she continues to be under house arrest. All of this adds up to the upcoming Pakistani elections scheduled for January being farcical.

I don’t know about that. Things are definitely not going well in that country but to jump to the conclusion that any election conducted will be a joke seems a little extreme. Ms. Bhutto almost got incinerated a couple weeks ago and insurgents and terrorists are taking over the country. And boycotting the upcoming elections, Bhutto’s party has intimated it might do it and others have threatened it, won’t help.

If the elections do turn out to be farcical then the international community will know that Musharraf cannot be trusted and he will start to see his remaining support abroad and domestically erode. That is why I think that the reason the opposition parties in Pakistan are threatening a boycott is because they don’t think they can legitimately defeat Musharraf. By boycotting the elections they are casting greater aspersions on Musharraf’s administration and, thusly, weakening him.

One more thing; just because Musharraf is a bad guy (and he is) doesn’t mean that someone, anyone else will be better. I think that is what is responsible for a lot of Benazir Bhutto’s support from the West. She’s just somebody else. She’s somebody else that her niece, Fatima Bhutto, knows a lot better then everyone else. And what she has to say is damning.

According to Fatima Bhutto her aunt is despicable. During her rule as Prime Minister in the 90s Pakistan was one of three countries that recognized the Taliban controlled country of Afghanistan. Benazir Bhutto’s house arrest is hardly anything horrible for her (even though Benazir Bhutto uses it to her advantage frequently) because she is being protected by the police and she has fifty members from her party with her at home. During her reign her husband was known as “Mr 10%” not because he believed in tithes but because he was seriously corrupt. Benazir talks about democracy now but just a few months ago she was talking with Musharraf about how they could circumvent the constitution and get her in power. Plus she wanted a lot of her cronies to be freed from jail sentences for corruption.

Perhaps the most damning accusation leveled against the one-time Prime Minister is the claim by her niece that Benazir probably had something to do with the assassination of her younger brother, her niece’s father, in 1996. The brother was a political opponent and the events surrounding his death screams assassination with upper level approval.

Is this the type of person we really want to take over in Pakistan? Someone who is obviously in it for herself? She is a first class corrupt official who has had dealings with the same terrorists who wrought 9-11. Benazir Bhutto may have even been behind the assassination of her younger brother as well. Musharraf is not ideal, to say the least, but the alternative is worse. Just because the situation over there is perilous now doesn’t necessitate change for the sake of change. BigT

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