by James Glaser
August 23, 2002

It was 1999, when General Pervez Musharraf took over the government of Pakistan, with a military coup. For a couple of years the United States and our western allies shunned Musharraf, because we are supposed to be against military coups that topple democracies.

That was Before George Bush became President and America started its War on Terrorism. Now we have decided this General Musharraf is our very good friend and when ever he is a guest of President Bush, he has been highly praised by our President.

It has been reported that President Bush and his administration, worked hard to implement a military coup in Venezuela this last April. True or not. America was the first country to recognize the military coup as the legal government, after they over threw a democratically elected president. This was against everything the United States believes in.

Back in Pakistan, General Musharraf has terrorized his countries government and people. First off he disbanded the countries Parliament and threw away the Constitution. Now he has brought the Constitution back and has amended it, giving him the right to dissolve Parliament and grant himself sweeping powers, including extending his own term in office.

No one can run for office in Pakistan, unless they have a college education, which rules out many opposition leaders and former members of Parliament. Musharraf has been terrorizing any opposition since he took power and will arrest any former heads of state that come back to run for office, if he calls for elections.

Right next door in Afghanistan our new best friends are the Northern Alliance, the faction that we employed to fight the ground war against the Taliban. The United States has often warned that those who commit war crimes will be discovered and pursued. But what if they are our friends?

This Northern Alliance, it is now reported, killed maybe thousands of Taliban soldiers that surrendered at Mazar-e-Sharif and Kunduz. Plainly a war crime. With the mass graves already found, many eye witness accounts, and the leader of the death squads known. Abdul Rashid Dostum, a member of the Afghan Cabinet, that the United States set up as a friendly Government, led by former American oil executive, Hamid Karzai, was the leader that executed all of these prisoners.

Dostum is now a friend of America, so could he be pursued as a war criminal? General Musharraf has been terrorizing his country and led a military coup, but hey, he is President Bush's friend now. So what can we say to him? In Venezuela, the people of the country that believed in Democracy, rose up and put their President back in office and threw out the military coup. President Chavez of Venezuela, is now, not our friend, nor George Bush's friend. He won election in a land slide and many say our George was jealous.

America might have a war on terrorism, but that is a war by selection. According to the actions of the United States and our President, George Bush, there are now good and bad terrorists. If President Bush happens to like a "good" terrorist like General Musharraf or the Afghan Minister Dostum, then our War on Terrorism will not touch them, but if they are a bad terrorist like President Bush thinks Saddam Hussein is, then we go to war.

America no longer even cares about proof of terrorism as in the case of Saddam or if America does have proof, but the terrorist agrees to help George Bush, then they are safe. There are two and one half more years of this Administration and we as a country will make it, however the rest of the world will have lost a lot of trust in our version of democracy by then.