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New Opinion Poll: Pakistan Loves Osama, Hates Musharraf and Bush
According to a new public opinion poll of Pakistani citizens, Osama bin Laden has a higher approval rating in Pakistan, 46 percent, than does Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, 38 percent.
This is potentially disastrous because Pakistan is home to two things: (1) nuclear weapons, (2) al Qaeda's leadership. If Indonesia or Libya held widespread popular support for bin Laden, it wouldn't be nearly as big a deal.
All I can say is, it's a good thing America is seen as a force for good in the world, a force willing to use positive incentives and diplomacy to reassure the Pakistani people that the extreme ideology of Osama bin Laden is a road to ruin, and that embracing the fragile democracy headed by Musharraf may someday lead them to become the strong and vibrant participatory society we are ourselves.
Oh wait. That's not right at all. And President Bush's approval rating in Pakistan, in the same public opinion poll, is nine percent. Nine percent! We've screwed things up so badly across the world, we don't have the cache to fix our most dire problems.
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I believe the word is "cachet", not "cache", but it matters not. I have always said that Pakistan is the most dangerous country in the world, and if Bush and the PNAC crowd had any ability to judge risk, they would have recognized that fact years ago. Instead, we waste our blood and treasure on a beaten-down tinhorn dictatorship called Iraq that was about as much of a threat to the U.S. as, say, Burkina Faso. As Richard Clarke so eloquently put it, "Attacking Iraq after 9-11 made about as much sense as attacking Mexico after Pearl Harbor".
I, too, have said, since 1991, that the real threat to the US and the western world would come from Pakistan some day. Their birth rate has been way too high, creating masses of bored, pissed-off young men who have been vlnerable to extremist Islamic teachings. The country has alternated between corrupt civilian 'leadership' and corrupt military 'leadership'. The Western part of the country is ungoverned, except perhaps by the Taliban and Al-Quaeda. Open sources report Pakistan has The Bomb. The Paks have been in contest with the Indians (the world's largest democracy) since the partition. Let us never forget that Saudi Arabia's oil wealth finances violent, extemist Madrasses in Pakistan and other countries. Of course the biggest reason we haven't invaded Pakistan, but invaded Iraq instead, is that IraQ has gobs of oil and the Paks do not. Ditto for our plans to destabilize, air-strike, and/or invade Iran. What are my proposed solutions? Certainly not cowboy miltary thuggishness...1) diplomacy, in concert with all countries...2)Reduce world oil consumption dramaticallly, through substantial conservation/efficiency technolgies, changes in life-syles, and robust, fast development of alternative energy sources (wind, solar, nuclear, ultra-clean, carbon-sequestered coal, etc)....3) A bold push to implement world-wide population stabilization (that is, women have an average of 2.1 children each to maintain the human population where it is, neither rising nor falling). Hwich if the 2008 presidential candidates has the brains and courage to lead us towards these goals?