Thoughts on Pakistan

Generally I keep my musings much more local. It takes more than I have to get torqued over issues of foreign/international consquence. But I have a couple of thoughts on President Pervez Musharraf's imposition of emergency rule (read: imposition of dictatorship) and the suspension of law in Pakistan.

First, why can't our own leadership see that attempting to spread democracy in the middle east is a whac-a-mole game we'll never win? Just when we'd been patting ourselves on the back having Pakistan even marginally on our side, its governing leadership does an about-face and pops up as one more non-democratic society that, inevitably, someone in power in the US is going to insist we squash in the name of saving them from themselves. We'll waste even more lives and resources trying to fight the hydra of undemocratic thinking that is the middle east. Fuck pride - why can't they just admit that it's a lost cause and stop pissing away our military and our money by spreading them thinner and thinner over that sand pit?

Second, for those of us who've noticed Bush quietly move the chess pieces into place for exactly the same scenario, it's a struggle not to feel a bit alarmed as events unfolding so far away might later unfold here. (And please note, even if this doesn't come to pass under Bush, our next President will have exactly the same bloated powers, courtesy of the predecessor. That the powers might be wielded by The Other Party doesn't make me feel any warmer or fuzzier.)