Posted on 11/17/2007 1:42:09 PM PST by Graybeard58
U.S. politicians and media are wasting no opportunities to lower the boom on Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, an important U.S. ally in the war on terror, aka Gen. Musharraf, human-rights violator, enemy of democracy and untrustworthy helpmate against Islamofascism. Maybe President Musharraf's Western critics should revisit comparatively recent events in Pakistan's unruly neighborhood.
U.S. leaders and the public spent most of the 1970s acquiring a strong distaste for Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran. No small-d democrat, he maintained rigid control over his subjects by means of a cruel, repressive secret police force called SAVAK. Many in the United States were not the least bit troubled to see him deposed in 1979 favor of an exiled "Islamic holy man," Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. We know how well that turned out.
Now President Musharraf is facing abandonment by the West even as he confronts his greatest challenge from within. Should his regime fall, its replacement promises to be far worse for the West and the Pakistani people. And unlike Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Pervez Musharraf will leave behind nuclear weapons.
Yet bastions of Western thought such as The New York Times are ready to throw him under the bus. "General Musharraf must lift martial law, reinstate constitutional processes, release political detainees, unfetter the media, give up his army post and accept whatever ruling the Supreme Court makes on his eligibility to be president," the Times declared in an editorial Wednesday. The paper didn't call for him to put a loaded gun to his head and pull the trigger, though that would be much the same thing.
To President Musharraf must go much of the credit for America's successes in the war on terror, including the capture of numerous al-Qaida and Taliban leaders, the absence of terrorist strikes on the U.S. homeland since 9/11, and the preservation of stability in a restless corner of the Islamic world. Those who wish him ill should think long and hard about what Iran has become in the 28 years since the Shah fell, and imagine what a post-Musharraf, nuclear-armed, fundamentalist-ruled Pakistan might look like.
Ping to a Republican-American Editorial.
If you want on or off this list, let me know.
—and I’ve hardly seen a word on Comerade Chavez in the MSM—or on his plans for Venezuela-—
Easy to tell this article wasn’t written by David Ethelbert Sanger.
I plead ignorance.
N.Y.T. - all I need to know, thanks.
We could learn much from watching a master such as Musharraf herd his cats.
Is it kosher?
Highly unlikely.
I knew that.
Did you know that the small font is hard to read by elderly people like me?
I know a trick with my wheel scroll mouse and ctrl. key to make it bigger though.
My old eyes need help, too!
(I don't have to SEE it to type it!)
Hold down the Ctrl key while scrolling the wheel back towards you to make the print bigger, opposite direction scroll will bring it back to normal size.
I have glasses but this is easier.
I have to pump up the size of almost every site. Glasses only work so far!
LOL! Do you realize that we're talkin' like OLD PEOPLE???
I thing laser mouses are down around $10 - $15 now and well worth it. If you get one, get the one with the scrolling wheel on it. That trick really does make the print bigger.
I’m 62, no spring chicken.
I'll check out those mice. Thanks!
(:-)
Where did I put my spectacle's....?
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