December 7, 2004 ☼ Foreign Affairs
This is an archived blog post from The Acorn.
Robert Scheer’s column is excellent.
Pakistan and the true WMD threat:The administration again hastened to explain that Musharraf was vital in the three-year effort to capture Osama bin Laden “dead or alive,” as Bush frequently has proclaimed. How embarrassing then, when hours later Musharraf conceded in a Washington Post interview that Bin Laden’s trail had grown completely cold but that the arch-terrorist is still very much alive and functioning.
Musharraf complains that calls for international access to Khan show “a lack of trust” in Pakistan, but his real problem is the scientist’s enormous popularity as the “father” of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb program. Khan “has been a hero for the masses,” said the general who has survived several assassination attempts and faces the possibility of a revolt if he tilts too far toward the West.
Meanwhile, Bush is so eager to cater to Musharraf that he is even championing the dictator as key to the creation of a democratic Palestinian state “that is truly free. One that’s got an independent judiciary; one that’s got a civil society; one that’s got the capacity to fight off the terrorists; one that allows for dissent; one in which people can vote. And President Musharraf can play a big role in helping achieve that objective.”
What balderdash. None of those conditions of a free society exist in Pakistan, nor are they likely any time soon in U.S.-occupied Iraq.
Yet while we chase the chimera of democratizing the Islamic world through the use of force, the true cost of this crusade can be measured by our indifference to our original justification of the Iraq invasion: stopping the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
And there’s no margin for error here. Next time the terrorists could take Manhattan and a whole lot more. [LA Times]
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