President Bush’s advice to Pakistani military dictator Pervez Musharraf is quite revealing. In the face of Musharraf’s brutal crackdown on civil liberties, Bush is telling Musharraf that he needs to have elections.
Whoop-dee-do!
Never mind that Musharraf’s military and police goons are beating up and rounding up lawyers and judges and other Pakistanis who believe in a constitution, an independent judiciary, the rule of law, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and other civil liberties.
In Bush’s mind, all that matters for “freedom” is a democratic election. The idea is that once people get to vote, then the ruler who is elected has the “right” to do anything he wants to his own people—well, as long as it’s part of the “war on terrorism.”
That’s in fact why Bush himself feels that he has the power to order his loyal military and police goons to round up, incarcerate, and torture Americans as enemy combatants, and to spy on Americans, and to ignore the Constitution and the laws enacted by Congress.
In principle, Bush doesn’t have anything against what his friend and partner Musharraf is doing. That’s why Bush intends to continue depositing millions of dollars in U.S. taxpayer monies into the coffers of Musharraf and his military goons. Bush just wishes that Musharraf had been elected before he began doing his dirty deeds.
