Article

2006-03-19 India-Pakistan

Musharraf won't depart without putting a final nail in Pakistan's coffin

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Posted by john 2006-03-19 11:41|| || Front Page|| [3 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Muslims cannot turn themselves into the kinds of moderates demanded by the inventors of these rancid notions without ceasing to be Muslims

Posted by john 2006-03-19 12:49|| 2006-03-19 12:49|| Front Page Top

#2 This fricking idiot misses the point. If Musharraf had refused to help Bush, even as little as he has, after 911 then Pakiwakiland and Afganistan would be glass today.

He's got a blind spot so big you could drive a million bbl oil tanker through it.

Posted by 3dc 2006-03-19 13:14|| 2006-03-19 13:14|| Front Page Top

#3 Musharraf's biggest mistake is to not follow the dictator's rulebook. That is, dictators have only a few choices if they want to keep their heads.

1) Be an iron-fisted bastard until you die. Never let the opposition have any advantage, and systematically take down your enemies. Do not let your lieutenants have a chance to be ambitious. This is a real dictator.

2) If you want to be succeeded by real democracy, you have to set up *both* the government party and the opposition party as totally loyal to the state. You smash anybody else with pretenses to power, such as religious leaders, fanatics, and other anti-democratic forces. You write and enforce the constitution, and take out anybody who wants to destroy it. Finally, when you surrender power, you either have to leave for good, or die. As with everything else, timing is everything.

Posted by Anonymoose 2006-03-19 13:29|| 2006-03-19 13:29|| Front Page Top

#4 Perv knew about the Indian offer of their bases to American forces.

He used this to justify the decision to his corps commanders

Posted by john 2006-03-19 13:30|| 2006-03-19 13:30|| Front Page Top

#5 We are the hollow men, heads filled with straw.

Posted by Thinemp Whimble2412 2006-03-19 13:40|| 2006-03-19 13:40|| Front Page Top

#6 It is not as if Pakistan's existance had done any good to anyone so why should it continue existing?

Posted by JFM">JFM 2006-03-19 14:26|| 2006-03-19 14:26|| Front Page Top

#7 JFM: for better or worse, Pakistan is useful right now. In one light it was much like Bangladesh, once part of India, but too filled with Moslems to integrate--it frees India from a perpetual civil war bloodbath with so many Moslems. But that was then.

Today and in the future, it holds other prospects. It does have a very useful new deep water port at Gwadar. It owns half the restive province of Baluchistan, and might someday soon be the only power capable of managing the other half, if it is wrested from Iran. Baluchistan, in turn, is very mineral rich, and could improve Pakistans standard of living very much.

Musharraf is the precarious man-in-the-middle. And dictator though he might be, he is all too aware that his hold on power is tenuous. His enemies cannot yet overthrow him, but he cannot slaughter them, so a stalemate is achieved.

We might actually wish that he was stronger, but only at the expense of his enemies. Gradually, he is becoming stronger, but only slowly his grasp tightens over his extensive and chaotic tribal enclaves. And this is far from the villains on his doorstep, in his parliment.

Posted by Anonymoose 2006-03-19 15:03|| 2006-03-19 15:03|| Front Page Top

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