she is right on target, they are equally evil US puppets and our media is playing the game for them...
http://tonykaron.com/2007/11/13/benazir-vs-musharraf-is-punch-vs-judy/Shlent was the marvelous onomatopoeic term we used in my student activist days, as verb or noun, to describe the stage managing of an event or process in a manner that allowed its appearance to camouflage a power play. (The sound shlent to me always evoked heavy pieces falling smoothly into place.) And I can think of no better term to describe the bogus “showdown” we’re being sold involving Pakistan’s General Pervez Musharraf and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. In fact, appearances aside (although they camouflage very little), it’s plain that Bhutto and Musharraf are still involved in an elaborate U.S.-brokered negotiation process to divide the spoils of power in what might be called Pakistan’s Team America. Musharraf’s police may periodically prevent her from leaving her house, but they’re largely doing her the favor of providing her an excuse for refraining from leading her supporters in confrontation with the regime — which she, and her backers in Washington, are very concerned to avoid. Bhutto has not suffered the fate of other opposition leaders, who have been hounded by the security forces and thrown in prison. And her own political awkwardness and hesitation in responding to Musharraf’s moves are a reminder that all is not quite what it seems in the media narrative of a brave and beleaguered civilian democrat confronting a military despot.
The U.S., in fact, pressed Musharraf to make a power-sharing deal with Bhutto, fearful of the fact that the general appeared to have no social base to continue his role as Washington’s gendarme in the region — as mischievously as he often plays it, every U.S. official who has spoken on the matter in recent weeks has affirmed Musharraf’s centrality to U.S. interests. It was not that the U.S. believed in restoring democratic civilian rule per se — the U.S. didn’t raise a peep of protest when the former prime minister overthrown by Musharraf, Nawaz Sharif, arrived home from exile, only to be unceremoniously bundled back onto a plane to Saudi Arabia — after first being sternly lectured about his impudence in showing up by two of Washington’s Mideast trusties, a Saudi prince and Lebanon’s Saad Hariri. No, Bhutto was Washington’s anointed civilian political leader, presumably after she managed to convince the Bush Administration that she was a more reliable ally in the “war on terror” than was Nawaz Sharif. And when pressed as to why she continues to talk to the dictator whose ouster she demands, her spokespeople say simply that the U.S. told them to.
Musharraf and Bhutto are both viewed as allies by Washington, the latter enlisted to broaden the base of stability of a U.S.-backed regime in Pakistan. But proxies always have their own agendas, and the precise balance of power between them remains very much in play — indeed, if anything, the current “showdown” is part of their contest over the balance of power in Pakistan’s Team USA.
So Bhutto calls on Musharraf to quit, and Musharraf responds by contacting Nawaz Sharif for a chat. This is like “War of the Roses.”
Musharraf didn’t declare emergency rule because he feared Bhutto’s challenge; he declared emergency rule because the Supreme Court was about to rule that he was not, in fact, legitimately the president of Pakistan, because he violated the constitution by standing for the presidency while in command of the military. And the reason Bhutto appeared to hesitate when it happened was obvious: She has as much to fear from the independent judiciary in Pakistan as Musharraf does. The same judges threatening to strip Musharraf of the presidency had also warned that the amnesty extended by him to Bhutto — absolving her of numerous corruption charges — was also illegal. (And, for good measure, the same judges had also ruled that Nawaz Sharif’s expulsion was illegal.) The last thing Bhutto needs is the rule of law and an independent judiciary in Pakistan, for that would pull the rug out from her deal with Musharraf, put her back in court, and bring her fiercest political rival back into the picture at a moment when she is increasingly vulnerable, politically, by virtue of her alliance with the U.S.
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