Despite, or possibly because of american efforts to prop up pakistan's military dictator musharraf, the normally contentious political parties in pakistan were able to come together and take a commanding majority in parliment.
The prime minister's promise to restore the judiciary musharraf dismissed and arrested is a clear and direct threat to musharraf's hold on power, and our ability to project power in pakistan through him.
Our role in pakistan is clear. We have supported musharraf's dictatorship because we desire the unchecked power to kill, kidnap, secretly detain, and torture any one we suspect of anti-americanism in the pakistani provinces bordering afghanastan.
Our demand for lawless authority is not limited to pakistan. We support a ring of dictators across the middle-east and around the world who act above the rule of law.
Despite our unchecked support for his brutal dictatorship, and musharraf's easy use of kidnapping and torture in service of our "war on terror," musharraf has not played the role we laid out for him.
Our last plan to broker a deal between the secular corruption of benazir bhutto and the military dictatorship of musharraf blew apart with the assasantion of bhutto.
The death of bhutto did more to unify pakistan than if she would have continued her life of political and economic corruption.
Bhutto's death has opened up a historical moment allowing all the major pakistani parties the oppertunity to unify on a shared public repudiation of the dictatorships and corruption that have plagued pakistani politics for decades. Bhutto has given more in death than she was ever capable of when she lived.
There are three dangerous wild cards hidden in this deck that can screw up the emergence of democracy in pakistan. The first is zadari, the corrupt widower of Bhutto. If "10% zadari" tries to wrestle the speakership out of the hands of his PPP underling, gillani, this fragile coalition may shatter. The other wild card is the role of the army.
If the army is willing to step back and take a back seat as musharraf is finally deposed, a parlimentry democracy could emerge in pakistan that resembles the relationship of the army and government in turkey.
The final wildcard is the role we will play in supporting musharraf, manipulating zadari, plotting with the army, and staging attacks in the western provinces. The history of our relationship with pakistan is clear: we will support military dictators who are willing to do our bidding.
If zadari cuts a deal to act as an agent of american authority, or the military intervenes to maintain musharraf, or we put too many missiles into the tribal areas, the situation in pakistan could spin out of our control into instability that will favor the adherents of radical islam.
We should step back and take a look at The Big Picture to get a better understanding of the context of the political situation in pakistan. To pakistan's west sits our military and political failures in afghanastan.
We started our latest imperial adventure in pakistan to prop up our war in afghanastan, but we have effectively lost afghanastan, and now we are on the verge of losing pakistan.
This suggests that no tatical adjustments will salvage our position in east asia. Our imperial policies are going down in flames across the middle-east. To recover from these failures we need to honestly examine our approach to, and our goals of our war in afghanastan and our support of authoritarian regimes across the middle-east.
An honest evaluation of our policies towards pakistan indicates that our actions reflect our values, means, and goals. Our goals and means are those of a corporate empire, not a democratic republic. This implies that the breakdowns and failures of our war and foreign policies are centered in washington, not baghdad, kabul, or islamabad.
The consistency of our historical support for dictators spans both democratic and republican dominated congresses, and is consistent across the administrations of both parties suggests that our political breakdown is systamatic, and not the product of a particular administration.
If we want to democratize the world we must first restore our democracy here. Otherwise we will continue to talk of freedom and democracy while making war and imposing dictators on nations seeking self-rule around the world.