Uniform standard.

Our great ally in the "global war on terror" and Cheney's favorite military dictator Pervez Musharraf declared emergency rule last week, just ahead of a ruling by his nation's supreme court on whether or not he could remain both president and army chief at the same time. (Hey... he's multi-tasking. What's wrong with that?) Before they could rule against him (as they were expected to do), he dissolved the court and appointed puppet justices in their stead. Case dismissed! Or rather, Court dismissed! Musharraf's placing his political opponents in fetid jails (or under house arrest for those of a more lofty social rank) and general (no pun intended) heavy-handedness sufficiently embarrassed the Bush administration (to the extent that it is capable of being embarrassed) into pressing for Pakistani elections and a call for Musharraf to "take off his uniform," in Dubya's words. Sure, it took a few days for them to react, but then it always takes at least that long for them to figure out that they need to do something. (See: Katrina) My guess is that the impulse came from either Rice or Gates (who was put there after the Baker-Hamilton commission to keep half an eye on things).

Here again, our lunatic foreign policy has made the world a far more dangerous place. Pakistan is a nuclear-armed nation run by the military. Its intelligence service (ISI) contains elements that are very close to the Taliban and, to a lesser extent, Al Qaeda. Because Pakistan shares a long border with Afghanistan (one so rugged as to be nearly impossible to secure) as well as deep cultural ties with Pashtun Afghans, the country has had an abiding interest in the political affairs of its neighbor, not surprisingly. Of course, our CIA managed proxy war in Afghanistan during the Reagan years leveraged that relationship, building with the assistance of the ISI a substantial army of "Arab" Afghans to fight the Soviets, from which sprang Al Qaeda. Our current war in Afghanistan put substantial pressure on Pakistan, the Musharraf regime being compelled by the U.S. to turn against its longtime allies, the Taliban. (In effect, they convinced Mullah Omar's crowd to fold shortly after the U.S. invasion.)

The subsequent war in Iraq has only increased the pressure. Though Afghanistan was always largely a war by proxy, U.S. forces and intelligence resources were transferred to Iraq, leaving that conflict to fester. As Iraq went septic, Iraqi insurgent tactics were increasingly exported to Afghanistan, where suicide bombings - virtually unknown in that country a few years ago - are now quite common, as are roadside bombings. Seeing a resurgent Taliban, our fearless leaders have pushed applied more air power, which means more indiscriminate killing on both sides of the Pakistani border, while pushing Musharraf to do more with his own forces. The result of the latter has been a kind of scorched earth policy in Waziristan, where collective punishment by the Pakistani army is relatively commonplace. This has raised the anger level against Musharraf's regime, and has likely produced more extremists than it has eliminated. Now we're threatening Iran with attack, raising the potential of an all-out regional war. And I'm sure Dubya is scratching his head and wondering why Pakistan is falling apart. Didn't he shake Musharraf's hand and see good in his soul, like he did with Putin, Blair, and Howard? What part of "useful to the U.S." do the Pakistani people fail to understand?

Don't get me wrong - there's plenty of blame to go around on this policy, the roots of which stretch back decades. But Bush and his crew are pouring gas on the fire... and we keep tossing them matches.

luv u,

jp