Monday, November 12, 2007

Mark Steyn on Pakistan on National Review Online


http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YWVjYWI5MDFmYzUzNzU3NTVmNTNlYzBmYjRmOTYwY2M=

It seems to me a certain humility is appropriate when offering advice to Islamabad. General Musharraf is — as George S Kaufman remarked when the Germans invaded Russia — shooting without a script. But that's because he presides over a country that defies the neatness of scripted narratives. In the days after 9/11, George W Bush told the world that you're either with us or against us. Musharraf said he was with us, which was jolly decent of him considering that 99.9999 percent of his people are against us. In the teeth of that glum reality, he's rode a difficult tightrope with some skill. As John Negroponte, U.S. deputy secretary of state, put it, aside from America "no country has done more in terms of inflicting damage and punishment on the Taliban and al-Qaeda since 9/11" — which, given the proportion of the population that loathes America and actively supports the Taliban and al-Qaeda, is not unimpressive.

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