For more than five months the United States has been trying to orchestrate a political transition in Pakistan that would manage to somehow keep Gen. Pervez Musharraf in power without making a mockery of President Bush’s promotion of democracy in the Muslim world.There is no sense here at all that there is anything objectively good about a stable, democratic Pakistan or progress against terror. Everything is couched in terms of the presumed political strategy of the Bush administration. Some things have a significance that goes beyond domestic politics. Not in the world of the Times, though.
On Saturday, those carefully laid plans fell apart spectacularly. Now the White House is stuck in wait-and-see mode, with limited options and a lack of clarity about the way forward.
General Musharraf’s move to seize emergency powers and abandon the Constitution left Bush administration officials close to their nightmare . . .
. . . after the declaration on Saturday, there was no immediate action by the administration to accompany the tough talk . . .
. . . even as she criticized General Musharraf’s power grab, Ms. Rice stopped short of outright condemnation . . . That seeming contradiction highlights the quandary in which the Bush administration now finds itself . . .
Whatever happens, experts say that General Musharraf’s decision was not good news for the Bush administration . . .
Crossposted on Soccer Dad
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