Delusions on Pakistan

FrontPage Magazine: “Why did our leaders evade Pakistan’s true nature? Faced with the need to do something against the totalitarian threat, it was far easier to pretend that Musharraf was a great ally who would help rid us of our problems if we would only uncritically embrace him. To declare Musharraf’s regime evil, albeit the lesser of two evils, would have required a deep moral confidence in the righteousness of our cause. The Bush administration didn’t display this confidence in our own fight against the Taliban, allowing the enablers of bin Laden to flee rather than ruthlessly destroying them. Why would it display such confidence in dealing with Pakistan? But no matter how much one pretends that facts are not facts, eventually they will rear their heads. This is why we are caught so unawares by the crisis in Pakistan. Our blindness was self-induced.”