In the Alice-in-Wonderland world of a respected foreign-policy deep thinker like Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria, repressive US-supported military dictators can be treated as patriotic and well-intentioned, while an elected president who defies the US empire can be casually smeared without so much as a word of justification.

Zakariah begins his Nov. 19 piece (http://www.fareedzakaria.com/articles/articles.html) by recounting speeches at the UN on the same day in Sept., 2000 by Pakistan's military strongman Pervez Musharaff and President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela:

"The two men couldn't have been more different. Musharraf delivered a scripted address barely looking up from his text. He ticked off a series of substantive points, recited facts and statistics, and left abruptly once he was done. Chavez, on the other hand, was full of smiles and guffaws. He mingled before and after his talk, gave an off-the-cuff speech, spoke of his great love of America, its people, culture and baseball. He quoted Walt Whitman. When it was time to leave, he reluctantly walked away. "This difference might explain the two leaders' divergent fates. Musharaff, for all his flaws, has been a far better president than Chavez, who despite Venezuela's oil bonanza has run the country into the ground." [emphasis added].

However, Musharraf, according to Zakariah's analysis, has unwittingly ignited massive unrest after years of popularity and economic growth by dissolving the Supreme Court, jailing dissidents, and clamping down on the media.

Up until now, Musharraf was simply trying to earnestly and straightforwardly guide it toward "moderation and modernity," as Zakariah charitably explains it. "He reaped the rewards of his actions, gaining popular approval at home (for the first five years of his rule) as well as staunch international support, especially from the Bush administration," we are told. Zakaria cites Pakistan's annual growth rate of 7% as evidence of Musharraf's success (meanwhile, under Chavez,
"Venezuela's real GDP has grown by 76 percent" since 2003, according to the Center on Economic and Political Research (http://www.cepr.net/content/view/1250/77/) , which doesn't exactly prove that Chavez has "run the country into the ground.)

Moreover, Zakariah does not trouble himself with the question of how much of that growth trickled down to Pakistan's poor (By comparison, the CEPR report notes the dramatic decrease in Venezuela's poverty, which "dropped by 31 percent from 1998 to the end of 2006 – from 43.9 percent of households to 30.6 percent.") Despite his best efforts, Zakariah tells us, Musharraf stumbled, as he "was never able to master the key skill you need to lead a nation--politics." So Musharraf's approval rating has tumbled to about 20%. (Chavez's approval rating stands at 57%, the LA Times reported 11/15/07))

CREDENTIALS AS 'PRESIDENT'
First, it must be noted, Musharraf possesses unique credentials as a "president" he is a self-selected and seized power in a 1999 military coup (which the US did virtually nothing to challenge, and has instead vastly increased military aid since then ), normally earning one the title of "dictator." In contrast, Chavez has stood for election as president three times, but was briefly unseated by a US-applauded military coup in 2002. But Chavez was returned in power in after a few days when a tide of mass protests forced the military to yield and allow a return to democracy. He withstood an effort by Venezuela's wealthy and light-skinned elite to recall him (aided by former Clinton advisors James Carville and Paul Begala) by capturing 58% of the vote. In 2006, he won reelection with 62% of the vote.

Still, Zakariah's unsupported assertion about Musharraf's superiority as a "president" to Chavez is apparently supposed to trigger nods of assent from Americans who have incessantly heard leaders of both parties--from Bush Administration officials to Hillary Clinton--state that he is a troublemaker and unworthy of high-level direct discussions. Apparently, a stance of resistance to US economic and political domination of Latin America, capped by a UN speech daring to mock George W. Bush for acting as if he "owns the world," is sufficient cause to be considered a pariah and major threat to US security.

In sharp contrast to Chavez, who is clearly a master "politician," the stolid, sincere Musharraf has been tripped up by his single-minded devotion to just trying to do his best for all of Pakistan, Newsweek's Zakaria would have us believe. Having dissolved the Supreme Court so that it could not rule against him running for reelection next year, Musharraf has indeed committed a colossal political error. He never anticipated the massive outpouring of democratic-minded professionals taking to the streets.

Along with that tragic mistake which Zakariah sees sympathetically as committed by "a non-politician," Zakariah might wish to account for these other steps taken by Musharraf:

• Arresting members of the Supreme Court, hundreds of lawyers, and uncounted pro-democracy advocates, while at the very same time, his supposedly anti-terrorist regime released 25 to 29 (media accounts vary) members of the Taliban in a prisoner exchange.
• Shutting off almost all independent media access within Pakistan, including the Internet.
• As chief of the military, diverting at least $10 billion in US military aid intended for anti-terrorist activity near the border with Afghanistan into the purchase of conventional military weapons which have no apparent purpose except to enhance Pakistan's ability to wage war against India.
• Permitting the dissemination of nuclear-weapons technology throughout the world via the work of Dr. A.Q. Khan and a network of collaborators who almost certainly extended into the military and the ISI intelligence service.

While US ally Pakistan was engaged in this widespread disperson of nuclear weapons of mass destruction, the US has been threatening war against Iran over its legal development of nuclear power and long menaced North Korea, a fellow member of the "axis of evil," over unproven charges that it was proliferating nuclear weapons to other nations. As it turned out, Pakistan was actually the culprit. (By the way, Dr. Khan, the master proliferator, has been pardoned by Musharraf.)

While Zakaria chooses to avoid discussing these acts by Musharraf, he offers one reassuring assertion and an ominous warning. Zakaria optimistically informs us, despite the current unpleasantness, that Pakistan has "serious traditions of law, human rights, and democracy."

To the extent Pakistan embodies those traditions, however, they have been cautiously nurtured at the grass roots outside government scrutiny and without the backing of the US government, which has a long tradition of backing dictatorships in Pakistan. The US provided crucial assistance to dictators like the brutal Zia ul-Haq in the 1970's (whose politics were the antecedents of today's Al Qaeda and Taliban), helped in setting up Pakistan's infamous ISI (that nation's version of the CIA), and used Pakistan to assemble a team of fanatical Islamists (including Osama bin Laden) from nearly 40 nations to wage a holy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. The most horrifying blowback from assembling and arming the Islamic fanatics was felt on Sept. 11, 2001.


Despite this sordid history (with which he does not bother the reader), Zakariah warns us of the dire consequences of slashing US military aid to Pakistan. The US already caused severe alienation among military leaders when it temporarily suspended military assistance after Pakistan proudly exploded its first nuclear weapon in 1998. "Were such a break to take place a second time, it is unlikely that Washington would ever again be trusted by Pakistan's military establishment," Zakaria says ominously.
RISK: LOSING TRUST OF PAKISTAN'S MILITARY
Losing the trust of Pakistan's military establishment is an interesting proposition. After all, haven't they proven to be a consistent bulwark of democracy in their own nation? Haven't they sought to prevent nuclear proliferation? Haven't they tried to avoid any provocative actions against fellow nuclear power India, which carries potentially devastating consequences? Haven't they courageously broken all their past ties to the Taliban and other extremists? Haven't they deployed the $10 billion-plus in US military aid to wage a ferocious struggle to wipe out terrorists on their frontier with Afghanistan? ("No" is the correct answer to all of the above.)

While George W. Bush and Co. could not be taken seriously about democracy promotion when they were supporting Musharraff, the leaders of Saudia Arabia, and other tyrannies, what about the rest of us? If we as Americans--especially the Democrats in Congress--truly believe in supporting democracy and human rights, the time has come to end aid to the military men who cast such an enormous shadow over Pakistani society.