I use Leftist to differentiate people from Left-of-center types and Liberals. I don't think some of the activist/blogger-type elements we're seeing today are genuinely Liberals, and I think they should be separated. For consistency, let's call them "progressives" so that you not think me a McCarthyite or something.
We disagree because you want to harp on and on about how wrong our policy is in Pakistan in the first place. It isn't. Foreign Policy is a collection of unfun choices, something a lot of presidents in the 20th Century, be them Democrats or Republicans, often learned the hard way. Strategically, if you supported the operation in Afghanistan (which I believe you did), it required a situation like this. Musharraf is abusing our partnership, and it's time to rein him in.
I think Musharraf has gone too far. But with all due respect to Scru, the main reason anybody here in the States cares about this issue is because of our strategic relationship with Musharraf. There are Russian forces in Georgia right now beating the shit out of anti-government protestors, and their government is
also considering a state of emergency. How much press does that get? Not a whole lot.
So the lens we look through with Pakistan is how it alters our own goals. If the alliance with Musharraf was bad, well what would've been better? I've seen some advocating elections there, arguing that the Islamists are rather unpopular. I'm not so sure about that, perhaps Scru could enlighten us a bit. But to turn this into "omg, some war on terror! ha! Bush am i right!" seems silly to me.
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