Andrew C. McCarthy exhibits clear thinking on Pakistan, even if it be sad and unsettling to accept. Some excerpts:
A recent CNN poll showed that 46 percent of Pakistanis approve of Osama bin Laden. . . .
McCarthy contrasts the Pakistan of our fantasy with the real Pakistan.
The real Pakistan is a breeding ground of Islamic holy war where, for about half the population, the only thing more intolerable than Western democracy is the prospect of a faux democracy led by a woman . . . .
The real Pakistan is a place where the intelligence services are salted with Islamic fundamentalists: jihadist sympathizers. . .
The real Pakistan is a place where the military, ineffective and half-hearted though it is in combating Islamic terror, is the
thin line between today’s boiling pot and what tomorrow is more likely to be a jihadist nuclear power than a Western-style democracy.
In that real Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto’s murder is not shocking. There, it was a matter of when, not if.. . . Whether we get round to admitting it or not, in Pakistan, our quarrel is with the people. Their struggle, literally, is jihad. For them, freedom would mean institutionalizing the tyranny of Islamic fundamentalism. They are the same people who, only a few weeks ago, tried to kill Benazir Bhutto on what was to be her triumphant return to prominence — the symbol, however dubious, of democracy’s promise. They are the same people who managed to kill her today. . .
McCarthy questions the Bush administration's obsession with democracy:
For the United States, the question is whether we learn nothing from repeated, inescapable lessons that placing democratization at the top of our foreign policy priorities is high-order folly.
The transformation from Islamic society to true democracy is a long-term project. It would take decades if it can happen at all. Meanwhile, our obsessive insistence on popular referenda is naturally strengthening — and legitimizing — the people who are popular: the jihadists. Popular elections have not reformed Hamas in Gaza or Hezbollah in Lebanon. Neither will they reform a place where Osama bin Laden wins popular opinion polls and where the would-be reformers are bombed and shot at until they die. . .
He concludes:
But we should at least stop fooling ourselves. Jihadists are not going to be wished away, rule-of-lawed into submission, or democratized out of existence. If you really want democracy and the rule of law in places like Pakistan, you need to kill the jihadists first. Or they’ll kill you, just like, today, they killed Benazir Bhutto.
Stanley Kurtz agrees and adds:
Andy McCarthy gets it. The people of Pakistan are not with us. The notion that a genuinely liberal democracy was imminent in Pakistan, and that the Bhutto assassination somehow cut it short, is not credible. Illiberal democracy in a fundamentally illiberal nation is not the answer. Imperfect as it is–and it is very imperfect–Pakistan’s military is the only thing that stands between the current instability and total chaos. There is a serious problem here, and faux democracy is not the solution. (Genuinely liberal democracy isn’t even an option.) Nawaz Sharif, the most Islamist-friendly mainstream politician in the country is not the solution either. I’ve made my case on that score here and here, but just read Andy and you’ll get the point.