Jack Kelly Sunday

Not much to day about Jack Kelly's column today.

After concluding that the war in both Iraq and Afghanistan is now "winding down" (let's hope so - because maybe then the troops can COME HOME), he goes on to analyse the mess in Pakistan.

I am struck by how it resembles something I read just yesterday by Tariq Ali in The Nation.

Here's what Jack writes:

So Pakistan has become the central front in the war on terror. Perhaps it always was, since al-Qaida's leadership took up residence there after being chased out of Afghanistan, and the war in Afghanistan cannot be won so long as the Taliban has a safe haven in Pakistan's northwest territories.

It's nice to see Jack Kelly's eyes have returned to watching the ball - al Qaeda. It was only two years ago when Jack drank deeply of dubya's Kool-aid:

Democrats and journalists scoff at President Bush's claim that Iraq is the central front in the war on terror. Zawahiri agrees with Bush:

"I want to be the first to congratulate you for ... fighting battle in the heart of the Islamic world, which was formerly the field for major battles in Islam's history, and which is now the place for the greatest battle of Islam in this era," he told Zarqawi.

But now that it at least looks like he may be nodding his head in the direction of the reality-based position that the War on Terror has to be focussed on al-Qaeda and not Iraq.

It's when he deconstructs the politics of Pakistan that things get delicious.

Benazir Bhutto has been lionized in the Western news media since her assassination. She was beautiful, brave and skilled at telling liberals what they wanted to hear. But Ms. Bhutto's two terms as prime minister (1988-1990 and 1993-1996) were disasters in which the standard of living in Pakistan plunged and Islamic radicalism soared. She talked a much better game than she played.

Ms. Bhutto's administrations were failures chiefly because she and her husband -- Asif Ali Zardari, aka "Mr. Ten Percent" -- were so corrupt. They squirreled away more than $100 million in foreign bank accounts. Canadian journalist David Warren described Ms. Bhutto as "the most spoiled brat I ever met."

The Pakistan Peoples Party she headed was never more than a vehicle for her father and then for Ms. Bhutto to obtain power to use for personal enrichment. Its undemocratic nature was demonstrated when the PPP elected Ms. Bhutto's 19-year-old son, Bilawal, to succeed her, even though he's returning to school at Oxford in England. Mr. Ten Percent will run the party while her son completes his education.

The Bush administration pressured Gen. Musharraf to permit Ms. Bhutto to return from exile. President Bush hoped that she as prime minister and he as president would form a coalition to battle the Islamists. But as soon as she returned to Pakistan, Ms. Bhutto directed her rhetorical fire at Mr. Musharraf, not the Taliban.

And then there's this from The Nation:

...Benazir Bhutto, who had returned to Pakistan as part of an ill-judged deal brokered by the Bush Administration and its British acolytes.

Add to this the sad spectacle of supposedly reformist, Western-backed politicians assembling like old family retainers at the feudal home of the slain leader and rubber-stamping her political will: Bhutto's husband, Asif Ali Zardari, has become stopgap supremo till her 19-year-old son, Bilawal, can replace his late mother as chairperson-for-life. This farcical succession occurred in a party that was born in 1967 out of the mass struggle of disenfranchised students, workers, professionals and peasants for democracy and, yes, socialism. That is why it was named the Pakistan People's Party. Its trajectory encapsulates the crisis of democratic politics in Pakistan: a party is publicly expropriated and corrupted by a single faction from an old family; its members are treated like serfs; its weak-kneed leaders told to either accept their new overlords or find another vehicle for their ambitions. Where can they go?

Jack slashes at the other dissident party:

But as bad as a third Bhutto administration likely would have been, it would have been preferable to having the other major "democratic" figure in Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, (prime minister from 1990 to 1993, and again from 1997 to 1999) elected to a third term.

While Ms. Bhutto's PPP was (more or less) secular, Mr. Sharif drew much of his support from Islamists. He strongly supported the creation of the Taliban, and it was during his second term that Pakistan developed the atomic bomb.

And we see this from The Nation:

The PPP's major rival, the Pakistan Muslim League, is hardly better. It is in the grip of the Sharif brothers. Patronized by the military and the state, they became very rich, which helped them to maintain their party and support. After Nawaz Sharif fell out with Musharraf and was toppled in the 1999 coup, he sought the protection of the Saudi royal family. Sporting Wahhabi headgear, he returned home in November with their support. It's bad enough having semipermanent military rule, but when the alternatives are deeply flawed booty politicians, what hope is there for this benighted land?

For whatever else is going on, it's good to see that Jack Kelly and The Nation are writing in parallel lines - at least at this small point on this one matter.