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Monday, August 18, 2008

Because in Pakistan, their Constitution still matters
Posted by Jill | 5:59 AM
Unlike in the U.S., where Congressional Democrats and Republicans have decided that gross violations of the Constitution don't matter, and that presidents are allowed to set their own laws even if they violate said Constitution, in Pakistan things are different:

Under pressure over impending impeachment charges, President Pervez Musharraf announced he would resign Monday, ending nearly nine years as the head of one of the United States’ most important allies in the campaign against terrorism.

Speaking on television from his presidential office here at 1 p.m., Mr. Musharraf, dressed in a gray suit and tie, said that after consulting with his aides, “I have decided to resign today.” He said he was putting national interest above “personal bravado.”

“Whether I win or lose the impeachment, the nation will lose,” he said, adding that he was not prepared to put the office of the presidency through the impeachment process.

[snip]

Mr. Musharraf has been under strong pressure in the past few days, as the coalition said it had completed a charge sheet to take to Parliament for his impeachment. The charges were centered on “gross violations” of the Constitution, according to the minister of information, Sherry Rehman.

The rhetoric from the coalition mounted over the weekend, but the leading politicians wavered on an exact date for bringing the charges, thus leaving a window for Mr. Musharraf to leave.

In his speech, Mr. Musharraf tore into the coalition for what he called their failed economic policies. He said Pakistan’s critical economic situation — a declining currency, capital flight, soaring inflation — was their responsibility. In contrast, he said, his policies had brought prosperity out of near economic collapse when he took charge in 1999.

He then gave a laundry list of his achievements, ranging from expanded road networks to a national art gallery in the capital. Although Pakistan’s literacy rate hovers around 50 percent, and is much lower among women, he took credit for new schools.

The army, the most powerful institution in Pakistan, stayed publicly above the fray in the past 10 days. But in remaining studiously neutral and declining to come to Mr. Musharraf’s rescue, the new leader of the army, Gen. Ashfaq Parvaz Kayani, tipped the scales against the president, politicians said.


So in Pakistan, we have a general who took power in a bloodless coup, and yet that country's coalition government was prepared to impeach, while here in the U.S., that beacon of democracy for the world, our so-called opposition party leader announced right after an election which put her party in power, that impeachment was off the table, and that a president who has committed crimes that make Nixon look like George Washington, should have no accountability for his crimes.

The irony makes the mind reel.

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Thursday, December 27, 2007

Lightweight this, bitchez!
Posted by Jill | 8:00 PM
So John Edwards is put at a disadvantage as a result of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto today because he's "a lightweight" on foreign policy, eh?

Not so fast, Joe Scarborough:

Edwards spoke in Waukon this afternoon about having calls in to Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf. Then, at his second event in Decorah, he told Iowans that he got his call returned.

“He called me,” Edwards said, “because I told the ambassador I’d like to speak to him. I met him a few years ago, which I think I told you earlier, and we had a conversation in which I urged him to continue the democratization process. He told me, he gave me his assurances that he intended to do that, and we also spoke about having international independent investigators allowed into the country for transparency purposes, for credibility purposes, and we spoke briefly about the elections.”

Edwards is the only candidate to have said publicly that he received a call from Musharraf today. Edwards did not join in the fight between rivals Clinton and Obama over which candidate has the best foreign policy advisers, and asked what this conversation does for his own foreign policy credibility, Edwards referred back to the complexity of the issue.

“I think that the most important thing is to understand what’s actually happening within Pakistan, the complex nature of the problems there, and to be visionary about what America needs to be doing,” he told reporters.


While Rudy Giuliani is out there running yet more ads on which he climbs once again on top of the pile of 9/11 corpses and says that only he will kill enough Muslims to satisfy the bloodlust of the Republican base, and Hillary and Obama are playing "Mine's bigger" on foreign policy, old Johnny the Tortoise is on the phone with Musharraf. As Marc Ambinder says in the Atlantic: "That's one heck of a talking point."

The RadioIowa blog has an MP3 of Edwards talking about the situation in Pakistan.

Even the National Review Online is rendered speechless that the guy they thought was just a pretty face was the go-to guy on the Democratic side today.

More from Cliff Schecter at Brave New Films, at MyDD, and at Le Grand Orange,

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Thursday, November 22, 2007

Why not just say "He's a schmuck, but he's our schmuck"?
Posted by Jill | 7:38 AM
And one from the "piss down my back and tell me it's raining" file:

President Bush yesterday offered his strongest support of embattled Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, saying the general "hasn't crossed the line" and "truly is somebody who believes in democracy."

Bush spoke nearly three weeks after Musharraf declared emergency rule, sacked members of the Supreme Court and began a roundup of journalists, lawyers and human rights activists. Musharraf's government yesterday released about 3,000 political prisoners, although 2,000 remain in custody, according to the Interior Ministry.
[snip]

Several outside analysts and a key Democratic lawmaker expressed incredulity over Bush's comments and called them a sign of how personally invested the president has become in the U.S. relationship with Musharraf.

"What exactly would it take for the president to conclude Musharraf has crossed the line? Suspend the constitution? Impose emergency law? Beat and jail his political opponents and human rights activists?" asked Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a presidential candidate. "He's already done all that. If the president sees Musharraf as a democrat, he must be wearing the same glasses he had on when he looked in Vladimir Putin's soul."


It may very well be that Musharraf is the US' best hope for keeping Pakistan, and its nuclear weapons, out of the hands of the Taliban, Osama Bin Laden, and the many other Bad Operators™ lurking in the mountains. But that doesn't make him a beacon of democratic hope.

Of course, given how George W. Bush has run his own government, it's clear that his definition of "democracy" isn't exactly the one the rest of us have.

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