Regime Front! A Third Front!

What intelligent insight does The Saint have to offer about this?

If it was ever truly sincere about promoting democracy, the Bush administration has clearly abandoned that policy at this point. In Iraq, the administration has backed an incompetent, quasi-democratic regime that was imposed at gunpoint. In the Palestinian elections, it didn't like the results, and has joined Israel in refusing to even speak to Hamas. In Lebanon, the presence of elected members of the Hezbollah party in the government was used by Bush policymakers to justify giving the green light to Israel's use of U.S.-supplied weaponry to dismantle large parts of the country's infrastructure and inflict large-scale civilian casualties. Not exactly "democracy promotion."

And in Pakistan, where opposition parties have overwhelmed the ruling party of Pervez Musharraf in this week's elections, this step forward for democracy came despite Bush policies, not because of them. When Musharraf imposed emergency rule and jailed opposition figures ranging from the head of the Supreme Court to leading players in the parties of Benazir Bhutto to Nawaz Sharif, the Bush administration made critical noises, but took no action. Calls to suspend military aid were ignored, and State Department spokesperson Richard Boucher described Musharraf as "indispensable" to U.S. interests in the region, as reiterated in an article in today's New York Times.

Now that Musharraf is for all practical purposes about to be dispensed with, the Bush administration needs to take a new approach.

A good start would be to adopt Sen. Joseph Biden's proposal to triple U.S. economic aid to Pakistan to $1.5 billion per year. A second step should be to acknowledge that flooding military aid into the country -- to the tune of $10 billion since the beginning of the Bush presidency -- has done more harm than good. In this administration -- if possible -- and certainly in the next, the United States needs to shift from "democracy promotion" to "democracy support." Instead of trying to impose pro-U.S. regimes by force, U.S. policy should involve supporting indigenous democratic forces with non-military assistance, taking its cues from the needs of these movements rather than trying to manipulate the results.

Going forward, the Bush administration should be pressed to support the new elected government; Sen. Joseph Biden's call for a tripling of U.S. economic aid to $1.5 billion a year is a good place to start. In addition, there should be an acknowledgment that the flood of U.S. military aid into the country -- as much as $10 billion since the Bush administration took office -- has done more harm than good. If the threat from Islamic extremism in Pakistan is to be effectively neutralized, much more will be accomplished by providing accountable governance that delivers basic services and, as a result, helps dry up any reservoirs of support for Al Qaeda and Taliban operatives. A shift in approach in Pakistan could usher in a new era of "democracy support," in which U.S. policy helps bolster indigenous democratic forces rather than attempting to manipulate the internal dynamics of other countries in an effort to install or prop up pro-U.S. regimes.

Link.