And the World
by Patrick J. Buchanan
“Inaction at this moment is suicide for Pakistan, and I cannot allow the country to commit suicide.”
Thus did President Gen. Pervez Musharraf declare a state of emergency and invoke martial law.
The Supreme Court has been dismissed, the chief justice put under house arrest. A thousand lawyers and political opponents have been incarcerated. Human rights organizations have been shut down. Independent news media have been silenced.
Musharraf has effected a second coup, the first being his takeover in 1999. Doing so, he invoked Abraham Lincoln: “By general law life and limb must be protected; yet often a limb must be amputated to save a life.”
Indeed, Lincoln, too, impeded elections in Maryland, ordered Chief Justice Roger Taney arrested, shut newspapers, suspended habeas corpus, arrested thousands who sympathized with the South’s right to independence and ordered a blockade of Southern ports.
What has been the reaction of the great evangelist of Wilsonian democracy in the White House to its suspension in Pakistan?
Military aid to the regime and army will continue.Welcome to the real world, where state interests always trump ideology.
Pakistan, a nation of 170 million with nuclear weapons, is up for grabs. And the major contenders are not democrats. On one side is Musharraf and loyal elements of the army, police and intelligence services. On the other are radicals with guns – disloyal soldiers, pro-Taliban militia, al-Qaida sympathizers and suicide bombers.
Such folks do not settle quarrels at ballot boxes.
http://buchanan.org/blog/?p=881