It's Pakistan, Stupid

To co-opt a phrase from a previous Presidential election, while the world is focused on Iran's pending nuclear threat and Dick Cheney's hunting prowess, the most significant developments as regards the so-called cartoon jihad may just be beginning to play out.

He noted that protests have been tapering off in many Arab countries, while escalating in Pakistan and Turkey.

A Turkey which becomes a part of the EU would set radical Islam's plans for a larger caliphate back, if not defeat it altogether. And an already skeptical EU will have one more good reason to back away from Turkey if the mostly Muslim nation sees widespread unrest.

At the same time, what most in the free world fear, a radical Islamic state with nuclear weapons could happen long before we're sure Iran has spun a centrifuge if Pakistan falls.

Radical Islamic leaders on Monday called for more rallies against the Prophet Muhammad cartoons in Pakistan as lawmakers disrupted a session of Parliament, protesting sweeping arrests before a banned demonstration over the weekend.

The rowdy opposition legislators forced the lower house of parliament, or National Assembly, to adjourn indefinitely after they stood up and chanted anti-government slogans. They also demanded a debate about the roundup of hundreds of Islamic hard-liners before Sunday's protest in the capital, Islamabad.

President Gen. Pervez Musharraf arrested thousands in attempts to preempt widespread violence and it doesn't seem to be working. It's well documented that he doesn't control large portions of his nation and Al-Qaeda's roots are entrenched in the mountains of Pakistan every bit as deep as they ever were in Afghanistan. Let's not forget that it was a Pakistani who placed the bounty on the head of a cartoonist.

Last week, a Pakistani cleric in Peshawar announced a $1 million bounty for killing a cartoonist who first drew the cartoons for the Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten.

The Carter administration mishandled events leading to the Shah of Iran being deposed thirty-years ago, but Iran was kept in check by its neighbor, Iraq. There is no such influence to encumber a potential radical theocracy in Pakistan, Iran would be a perfect ally for them, and the issue of a radical Islamic state with a bomb would become moot over night.

With Turkey still swaying in the wind and subject to its own widespread unrest, the posture of radical Islam against the free world would be irreversibly changed for the worse if Pakistan should ever fall.

Comments

[Sgt. York]

President Gen. Pervez Musharraf
The President and a General. How quaint.

In my book when the military has a coup d'état and the "general" announces himself "president" it translates as Dictator. The Pakistanis are faced with the choice of a weasil Dictator who is the poodle of the Americans or the religious-nationalists who want a truely Islamic state.

================

[Machiavelli]

In reality it doesnt matter if he is a dictator as long as he is in control... Look why we axed saddam. Not because he is a dictator...but because he was increasingly funding terrorists and seeking the side of islamofascism instead of his relatively safe (from a US standpoint) stalinistic approach to governing iraq. That and the desire to restart development of WMD's at some point in the future and possibly supply some to terrorists hitting the US.

In fact I think the best the US can do for iraq is find a musharaf so we can get the hell out of there.

[Phoenix]

Sarge,

Are you on LSD?