And here we go again

A little primer from a pissed off Pakistani.

Bhutto will get control over domestic affairs, Mush and the military will control defense and foreign policy. The military will never hand control of the nuclear program to a civilian government because it just doesn't trust them - and as a Pakistani I couldn't agree more.

Bhutto is no savior - just another corrupt and power hungry politician. This would be her third term, and she still hasn't completed a full term. Keep in mind it was her father who made Pakistan an Islamic republic (it was always a secular republic until the late 70s - hell we have a deserted casino lying out on the beach in Karachi). He brought it under the guise of Islamic socialism, and nationalized everything, including education (of course my/Benazir's alma mater was excluded), setting us back 20 years economically - I will concede that industry was an oligarchy, but there were better ways of doing it. Plus, I always found a Berkley socialist from a major land owning family to be amusing.

Nawaz Sharif is no better - he's probably slightly worse because he'd be more willing to work with the Islamic parties if you take his most recent term into consideration. Plus he was big on censorship, though I think (and hope) that the media revolution in Pakistan has gone too far to reverse at this point, but you never know.

You think you Americans have it bad with Democrats and Republicans? Our choices are limited to extremely corrupt and incompetent politicians (Benazir and Nawaz), crazy politicians (Islamic parties) and a military dictator. If you study Pakistan's history, you'll see why we didn't complain for the last 8 years. We love looking at the bottom line, and a half decent dictator who let the media expand and let there be somewhat of a semblance of free speech, assisted by a team of technocrats that has outperformed previous civilian governments of the preceding decade isn't too shabby.

We'd love democracy, but we're not willing to make the sacrifice to our short-term bottom line. I guess a political equivalent of Ricardian equivalence needs to be incorporated into our civil society. But we'll need a civil society before we even get to that point.