In Slate, Lee Smith paints the Pakistani army as the last bulwark against the Islamic hordes:
The Pakistani military, as is the case with most armed forces in the Muslim world, is the citadel of the country’s modernity, its most significant secular institution and protector not only of the modern nation state but the idea of the nation state itself. Still, that is a mighty thin green line standing between 1,300 years of Islamic military principles, many thousands of years more of tribal and ethnic rivalries, and a nuclear arsenal.
Condi Rice, meanwhile, is guilty of emasculating President Musharraf, just when she should be supporting his brave fight against terror:
Rice is compromising Musharraf’s only sources of political legitimacy—U.S. support and his status as a military man. Maybe she believes that the general should surrender his sidearm as well.
“If the secretary of state is concerned that Pakistan is falling behind in its commitment to democracy,” Smith lectures, “she should recall that there is no democracy without the institutions of a nation state, and if Musharraf falls, there is no telling what would happen next.”
But isn’t that the problem? That Musharraf has chosen to attack precisely those ‘institutions of a nation state’ – the media and the courts – that have most legitimacy? And that by ‘standing by Musharraf’, the US has been complicit in destroying whatever popularity he may once have had?
Update: Gideon Rachman makes a similar point:
The history of the cold war demonstrates that the best way to entrench anti-Americanism for generations is for the US to support an unpopular dictatorship. And the polls show that Gen Musharraf – who once commanded quite a lot of support – is increasingly unpopular within Pakistan. His approval ratings are now in the low 20s – and that was before the declaration of a state of emergency.
