Looks as if Musharraf is on his last legs. We’re going to spend the next couple of decades regretting the Clinton/Bush policy of treating that thug as “our S.O.B.” Even now, Condi Rice can’t work up the gumption to support the civilian leadership. They’re going to remember that once Musharraf is gone. And they’re going to remember our passivity when they tried to rein in the ISI, and failed.
This is, I think, the chief argument agaist “realism” as a foreign policy doctrine: it’s almost invariably associated with short-termism. Not, of course, that the civilian politicans of Pakistan are anything to write home about. But at least we could have taken the side of constitutional forms, even given that the content was and is rotten.
