"Bush nudges Mideast on democracy."
Yeah, that's about all he does. "Gee, Your Majesty, it would be really peachy if you would consider giving a smidgen of power to a democratic body."
Fareed Zakaria was on the Daily Show last night. He observed that basically, the Bush Administration is for democracy in nations that are strategically irrelevant to the United States. When it comes to nations such as Pakistan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, not so much.
Zakaria made a very good point: When a dictatorship cracks down on its opposition, the only people left standing to oppose the dictatorship are the militants. Musharraf is cracking down on the moderates, the people who want the government to follow the country's constitution. Zakaria argued that the main reason Musharraf declared a state of emergency was that the Pakistani Supreme Court was going to rule against Musharraf.
The danger is quite real. One only has to look to Iran, where a democratic government was crushed by a dictatorship, to see how this may play out in Pakistan. The one institution that might turn on Musharraf may be the Army, if the generals realize that as messy as democracy is, a government by the Islamic militants would be far worse.
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