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For all the talk of democracy and democratization, the administration of George W. Bush has lost more democracies around the world than it has saved , or created.
Concerning the current crisis of confidence, democracy, and leadership in Pakistan under the dictatorship of Pervez Musharraf, diplomatic declarations of demonsrated "disappointment" do not suffice. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice must denounce Musharraf's thuggery, and demand a restoration of popular sovereignty and the rule of law.
Of course, what has happened in Pakistan is another indication of the type of crap shoot diplomacy and willful disregard of international realism (and international idealism, for that matter) on the part of the White House.
Had the administration not misunderstood and misinterpreted Musharraf, if the United States had pursued its avowed enemy--Al Qaeda---in Afghanistan, rather than detouring resources and focus to Iraq, Pakistan would not be in the situation she finds herself in today. George W. Bush bears a great deal of responsibility for that error and miscalculation. Iraq posed no threat --strategically--to the United States. Afghanistan did and does as Al Qaeda, the masterminds of 9/11 target Pakistani nuclear weaponry and use northwest Pakistan as their base of operations. Moreover, the tribal areas of Pakistan have proven a welcome refuge for Osama bin Laden. Iraq was and is a distraction. The president's miscalculation now demonstrates the slide of the Middle East towards violence, extremism, and calamity.
The administration's crap shoot, that Musharraf favored democracy, was or is a democrat, is an historical and biographical absurdity without foundation in reality or fact. Musharraf seized power by force; inviting Benazir Bhutto back to Pakistan was simply part of his plan to neutralize his political opponents, far easier to do with Bhutto within his reach than criticizing him from afar.
The threat to democracy and the rule of law we are witnessing in Pakistan shows, I believe, just how dangerous the "war on terror" may be: the foundations of our own democratic traditions are under immminent threat as the Congress bows reflexively to the administration's international willfulness. Jefferson, among the Founders of our nation's democratic government, recognized the Congress---the people's branch--as the first among equals, not co-equal in the ordinary sense we like to think. That is why the Founders place it first and devoted more words to it than to either the executive or the judiciary. Popular sovereignty, the will of the people, is supreme to sovereign willfulness, and the foundations of democracy are constructed on the belief that the will of the people very often is superior--in wisdom and generous intent--to the will of a single ruler.
It is time for the Congress to intervene, and assert its authority, as provided for in the United States Constitution, to shape this country's foreign policy, sensible, realistically, and with an eye towards democratic ideals.
And it wouldn't hurt if the Congress denounced anti-democrats, like Musharaff, rather than expressing mere "disappointment."
The real enemy is Al Qaeda, first in Afghanistan, then in the Pakistani northwest, and now, unfortunately, in the settled territories of Pakistan. The enemy is not Iraq.
