No Regrets, Even About Genocide

"Bush says he sees the Pakistani elections as part of the victory in the war on terror.

"'After all, the ideologues can't stand . . . free societies -- that's why they try to kill innocent people,' Bush said. 'That's why they tried to intimidate people during the election process.'

"He said he was pleased that Musharraf followed through on his promise to remove emergency rule and hold free elections."

Gosh, that sounds just like this morning's Wall Street Journal editorial: "The results of Pakistan's parliamentary vote are being billed as a repudiation not only of Pervez Musharraf, but also of President Bush, who has mostly supported the Pakistani strongman over the past seven years. We're more inclined to see the elections as a vindication of both."

But Juan Cole has a different view in Salon: "Although George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have built their war on terrorism on a close alliance with Musharraf, that entire hollow pillar of Bush administration policy has been dealt a severe, perhaps fatal, blow.

"The new civilian Pakistani government on the verge of forming may be far less amenable to the hard-line, militaristic policies of the Bush-Cheney war on terror. That remains to be seen. But what is clear is that the administration's coddling of Musharraf -- lavishing him with billions of dollars in aid while turning a blind eye to his egregious assault on nascent Pakistani democracy -- has achieved precious little in the way of U.S. national security goals. Vietnam-style search-and-destroy missions, whether carried out at U.S. insistence by the Pakistani military in that country's northwest frontier, or by U.S. troops across the border in Afghanistan, appear only to have grown a new militant Taliban movement on both sides of the border. In the midst of this fundamentalist resurgence in the Pushtun tribal areas, Osama bin Laden remains at large."

Cuba Watch

Michael Abramowitz writes in The Washington Post: "Those hoping for a new U.S. policy toward Cuba have waited nearly 50 years for Fidel Castro to step down. But they will have to wait at least one more year, after President Bush leaves office, to see any possibility of change in the hard-line U.S. position that has transcended nine administrations.

"Bush and his top advisers made it clear yesterday that they do not intend to relax the trade sanctions and other policies aimed at isolating the Cuban government."

The New York Times editorial board writes that "the post-Fidel era is clearly at hand, and the Bush administration has done almost nothing to prepare for it.

"Cuba is a closed, repressive society. But the administration has gone out of its way to ensure that it has no chance of influencing events there. In the name of tightening the failed embargo, it has made it much harder for academics, artists and religious people to travel to Cuba and spread the good word about democracy, and much harder for Cubans to visit here. Rather than probing the ongoing political transition, the White House has dismissed it in advance as insignificant. . . .

"If President Bush wants to get the message of democracy across, he should loosen restrictions on cultural and academic exchanges and open the way for serious diplomatic contacts with Mr. Castro's successors."

Wiretapping Watch

David G. Savage writes in the Los Angeles Times: "The Supreme Court on Tuesday dismissed a challenge to President Bush's order authorizing the interception of some phone calls and e-mails within the United States, dealing another defeat to civil libertarians who say the president violated the law.