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Bush’s Musharraf Envy

Scott Horton, a Professor of Law, who writes regularly for Harper's Magazine, highlights a more than interesting comparison in the way the Bush Administration has responded to the actions of the military in Burma and General Musharraf's, in effect, a military coup even if described as invoking martial law.

"Yesterday, President Bush spoke publicly for the first time about General Musharraf’s coup d’état in Pakistan. His remarks and his conduct overall make for a curious contrast with his recent reaction against the Burmese dictatorship and its crackdown against demonstrations that sprang out of the nation’s faith-based community. His words directed towards Musharraf were astonishingly mild and understanding. Musharraf’s coup was a strike first against the Rule of Law. The enemy he identified consisted of the judges, the courts and the legal profession. He claimed they were taking the country down. Musharraf’s moves had been very carefully crafted to echo Bush’s own rhetoric: his denigration of lawyers, courts and judges, and his steady erosion of constitutional rights in order to bolster his own war-making powers. If Bush can play this game, Musharraf thought, why can’t I? But apart from his religious salutations, Musharraf’s speech could almost have been given by Dick Cheney at his next visit to a Whites-only country club. Musharraf’s main speech even evoked Abraham Lincoln in language which could have been taken straight from the pages of the Weekly Standard. They hit their target."

Meanwhile, for a perspective from Pakistan, read Barney Rubin's postings on his blog from Islamabad. In his latest posting Rubin writes:

"The most common feeling toward the U.S. I have encountered is a kind of anger mixed with disappointment. Pakistanis are angry at the U.S. and consider it hypocritical because it has consistently supported dictatorship in Pakistan. Many are also baffled and furious because they see clearly the complicity of part of the Pakistani security forces with the Taliban on both sides of the border and cannot comprehend U.S. continued support for that same military.

They see a weak reaction by the U.S. to the virtual martial law decreed by General Musharraf. In particular they hear U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates say, "We are reviewing all of our assistance programs, although we are mindful not to do anything that would undermine ongoing counterterrorism efforts." What they hear is, the U.S. will review its support for education and health programs, but it will continue its massive subsidy (an estimated $1 billion per year) to cover the cost of operations by the Pakistan military: the same military that has declared a pseudo-emergency (in reality, martial law), under which protesting lawyers have been beaten and hundreds of non-violent democratic political leaders arrested, while the militants continue their campaigns without hindrance."

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