To say that the White House’s policy towards Pakistan has left the United States in an awkward position right now would be a dramatic understatement. With Gen. Pervez Musharraf having suspended the constitution and stifling any semblance of freedom, Bush, once again, is left with bad and worse options.
As Fred Kaplan explained, these conditions are not just an accident of circumstance. The administration’s policy helped produce this mess.
We can’t do much about this now, but we might have been able to do something about it two years ago or six months ago. The fact that we didn’t is a grave indictment of Bush’s foreign policy, both its practices and its principles.
For instance, nearly all of the $10 billion in U.S. military aid to Pakistan has gone to its military. Bush could have at least tried to funnel a larger portion of the aid to democratic institutions.
This crisis was triggered last March when Musharraf fired the chief justice of the Supreme Court for criticizing his rule. That set off the unprecedented street rallies by the nation’s lawyers. That emboldened the Supreme Court, which started to take its duties seriously. That gave rise to the near-certainty that the court would rule Musharraf’s reign illegal. That tipped Musharraf to suspend the constitution — and, with it, the courts.
Since Bush officials stay in touch with Musharraf quite frequently, and since they are known to pay at least lip service to democracy, someone could have at least advised Musharraf to get off this track. No one could have expected him to turn democrat, but he could have taken palliative measures — or cynical ones: for instance, paying off the justices — to ward off a crisis.
As Kaplan concluded, “The Bush foreign policy was neither shrewd enough to play self-interested power politics nor truly principled enough to enforce its ideals.”
As for the president’s vaunted “freedom agenda” — Bush repeated just a few days ago, “We are standing with those who yearn for liberty” — that’s no longer operative.
…Musharraf, a U.S. ally, had suspended his country’s constitution, arrested Supreme Court judges, closed media outlets, and beat or imprisoned demonstrators by the hundreds — using some of his billions of dollars in American military aid to impose martial law.
Bush’s Freedom Agenda frowns upon these activities — and yet Bush and his aides acted yesterday as if Musharraf had made an illegal right on red, or perhaps parked in a handicapped space.
“What we think we ought to be doing is using our various forms of influence at this point in time to help a friend, who we think has done something ill-advised,” one of Bush’s top aides declared from the podium in the White House briefing room.
“The question is, what do you do when someone makes a mistake that is a close ally?” the official argued. “The president’s guidance to us is see if we can work with them to get back on track.” […]
It didn’t even rise to a diplomatic slap on the wrist — and Bush aides must have realized this was not something to be proud of. Before the official briefed reporters from behind the microphone, an aide removed the oval White House seal from the lectern.
After the president’s rationale(s) for the war in Iraq fell apart, the White House crafted a post-hoc rationalization for the invasion — the United States was committed, above all else, to spreading democracies and toppling dictators across the globe. For Bush, this met our idealistic goals (spreading freedom), and our practical goals (more democracy means better security).
It was always a dubious proposition, more politically convenient than ideologically heartfelt, but this week, the “freedom agenda” is officially over. As Kaplan noted, Bush will “never again be able to invoke it, even as a rhetorical ploy, without evoking winces or laughter.”