Axis of Sketchy
Allies
By MAUREEN DOWD,
OP-ED COLUMNIST
From the NYTimes on
the Web, September 23, 2006
WASHINGTON -- It helps to plug
your book at the White House.
At a news conference with President Bush, Pervez Musharraf was asked about his
claim on “60 Minutes” that Richard Armitage had threatened to bomb Pakistan back
to the Stone Age if it did not cooperate in routing the Taliban in Afghanistan.
After coyly sidestepping the question, saying he had to save such juicy tidbits
for his book’s publication next week, he shot up over 1,000 spots on Amazon.com.
General Musharraf told Steve Kroft he found the Stone Age crack “very rude,’’
and Mr. Armitage was on the defensive yesterday, explaining that he had been
tough with Pakistan just after 9/11 but had not made any Flintstones threats.
The former deputy to Colin Powell needn’t apologize. That was the last
time our foreign policy was on track, when we were pursuing the real enemy.
It’s all been downhill from there.
The Pakistan president is a smooth operator, a military dictator cruising around
the capital with his elegant wife and enormous security contingent, talking
about how much he likes democracy, which he won’t yet allow.
He may have more respect for checks and balances than Dick Cheney, but that’s
not saying much.
On the subject of Osama, he’s so slippery you want to lock him in a room with
the muscle-bound Mr. Armitage. General ... General, as W. called him in
that famous campaign pop quiz, tried to persuade Mr. Bush that the shabby truce
he recently made with tribal leaders, agreeing that the Pakistani Army would
stay out of the wild border area next to Afghanistan — where Osama and other Al
Qaeda and Taliban members are believed to be hiding — was really “against” the
militants.
The Pakistan government has, in effect, simply turned over the North Waziristan
area to the militants. ABC News quoted Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan Khan of
Pakistan as saying that the deal was an implicit amnesty, and that Osama “would
not be taken into custody” as long as he was “being like a peaceful citizen.”
American officials are dubious about Mr. Musharraf’s commitment to destroying Al
Qaeda and the Taliban. But at the press conference, W., who no doubt
thinks he has seen into General ... General’s soul, acted as though he were
willing to believe the Pakistani president when he says he is “on the hunt” for
Osama and the Taliban at the same time he’s setting up a safe haven for them —
and getting huffy at the idea that American forces have the right to go into
Pakistan to track Osama.
“Americans who are concerned about a recurrence of 9/11 are worried about the
Axis of Evil when the real problem is the Axis of Allies — Saudi Arabia,
Pakistan and Britain,’’ the British historian Niall Ferguson says. “The
terrorists are funded in Saudi Arabia, they’re trained in Pakistan, and they
organize their plots quite easily in London.’’
Mr. Ferguson, who analyzes evildoers and despots in his new book, “The War of
the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West,’’
observes that Mr. Musharraf could not survive if he truly tried to break up the
cozy relationship between militants, tribal leaders and some in his Army and
intelligence service.
The Paks, as W. and Vice like to call them, are at the heart of the Faustian
deal the Bush administration has made. The justification for invading Iraq
was that they couldn’t allow a dictator who might be harboring terrorists to
stay in power. But their great ally in the war on terror is General
Musharraf, a dictator who appears to be harboring terrorists, including the one
we want most.
Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, who will dine with W. and General ...
General at the White House next week, expressed a sly skepticism about his
neighbor’s protestations that he is strategizing against militants. As
David Sanger reported, Mr. Karzai told Times editors and reporters that he had
tried to get Pakistan’s help in repelling the resurgent Taliban by giving the
Pakistanis “information on training ground, on operation, people, their phone
numbers, their G.P.S. locations.’’
“Our friends come back to us and say this information is old,’’ Mr. Karzai
continued. “Maybe. But it means they were there.”
Asked where Osama was, he smiled and replied: “If I said he was in
Pakistan, President Musharraf would be mad at me. And if I said he was in
Afghanistan, it would not be true.”
We may not have Osama, but at least W. helped General ...General with his Amazon
ranking. “Buy the book,” the president recommended as the two allies
wrapped up.
|
