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How Bush should respond to Mush

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Nov 07, 2007

Why won’t the White House do something useful in response to Pervez Musharraf’s assault on Pakistan’s secularists? What I keep hearing is that George W. Bush desperately needs to conserve his allies in the war against terror.

Bollocks. Here are three reasons that this argument reeks of hypocrisy:

First, Musharraf’s cruel crackdown on human rights activists, journalists and people who take the rule of law seriously is a war of terror. Bush needs to name it. T-e-r-r-o-r-i-s-m: the deliberate targeting of innocents to inflict intimidation on an entire population.

Second, conserving allies requires you to identify who your allies actually are. In the fight for democracy, your friends are those who support an independent judiciary, women’s equality, minority rights and transparency. Read: the very Pakistanis being brutalized by Musharraf now.

Finally, conserving allies has rarely been on the to-do list of the Bush administration. Remember those riots over the Prophet Muhammad cartoons? Authoritarian regimes in the Middle East orchestrated much of the violence. Their target (when it wasn’t nuns and aid workers) was Denmark — a free country that has dispatched troops to both Iraq and Afghanistan. Now there’s a U.S. ally worth preserving.

But how did the State Department respond under Bush’s direction? Since I still believe in civilian courts, you be the judge:

“These cartoons are indeed offensive to the beliefs of Muslims. We all fully recognize and respect freedom of the press and expression, but it must be coupled with press responsibility. Inciting religious or ethnic hatreds in this manner is not acceptable. We call for tolerance and respect for all communities and for their religious beliefs and practices.” - Justin Higgins, February 3, 2006.

My verdict? The Bush administration preferred to validate the choreographed outrage of some Muslims living under manipulative dictators than to conserve a key friend — Denmark — whose own Muslims, in the main, refused to get riled up about the cartoons. The dissing of Denmark wasn’t just reckless. It was feckless.

No, my sweet gulab jamans, I don’t buy the excuse that America needs Musharraf to the point of tip-toeing around tyranny. What America needs is integrity to retain any shred of cred in the battle for human dignity.

Benazir Bhutto sums up the challenge in her New York Times commentary. She’s finding her voice. When will Washington?