Dear Sen. McCain: No, the Taliban Prisoners didn’t Carry out 9/11; but you Supported Muslim Radicals

http://www.juancole.com/2014/06/prisoners-supported-radicals.html

Dear Sen. McCain: No, the Taliban Prisoners didn’t Carry out 9/11; but you Supported Muslim Radicals
By Juan Cole | Jun. 9, 2014

~snip~

(from 1980)

“McCain appears never to have met a rightwing dictator he didn’t like. McCain defends the dictator. Here is what McCain said about Musharraf late last December:

“Prior to Musharraf, Pakistan was a failed state,” McCain said. “They had corrupt governments and they would rotate back and forth and there was corruption, and Musharraf basically restored order. So you’re going to hear a lot of criticism about Musharraf that he hasn’t done everything we wanted him to do, but he did agree to step down as head of the military and he did get the elections.”

So in the building confrontation between democratic parties and the military dictator who trashed the rule of law, which would McCain support? What kind of relations will a president McCain have with the new prime minister of Pakistan if McCain is on record supporting the dictatorship that preceded?

The potted history McCain offers is wrong, and it points to the deep problems of authoritarianism and admiration for dictatorship in McCain’s political philosophy. Pakistan was not a failed state before 1999, and in fact most of its political problems derived from repeated military coups such as the one spearheaded by Musharraf, as well as from the US government giving the Pakistani military gobs of money and enormous stockpiles of weapons, and winking at its nuclear program. In fact by “US government” above, we really could just substitute “Senator John McCain.”