There is truth to what you are saying but Musharraf didnt create a stable situation as much as he represented stability in himself. You are looking at it completely wrong, Musharraf, as a military leader inspired greater confidence than the civilian leadership before and after him that always operates at the whims of the military general of the time.
Also it was Musharrafs terrible policies and decision making in regards to America and the War on Terror that has landed us in this mess. Many of the most important economic indicators lag behind the real cause of problems. The actions of Musharraf were the precursor for the disaster today. The aid is no longer helpful in keeping the economy afloat because it did its part initially, as the economy has increased quite a bit since then...ofcourse, if you keep increasing the aid incrementally, which is what we seem to survive on, youll be shocked at how well Pakistan will begin to cope with its debt issues.
The problem remains, we have very few sources of revenue for the government, leaving it reliant on aid and remittances.
Did we have any choice back then? Musharraf always wanted the best for his people. And I believe him when he says that. Because he is one of the few corrupt-free and honest people we have around in Pakistan.
Never have I heard or read anything about Musharraf being corrupt or on-going suspicions about his financial well being. That's SOMETHING. A clean slate, an example for the rest of our politicians.
Our economy was growing 7-9% during his tenure, you can't say that we managed that only because of U.S. aid and sanctions being lifted. That's doing injustice to his policies.
Musharraf himself has said he was busy rebuilding the nation untill the U.S. came along.
We still went along just fine, but the problem became even bigger when the war was stretching out and suicide attacks in our country became a daily thing.
I still say that we atleast had a stronger and more respectable image during Musharrafs era.
And we also had the 2nd fastest growing economy. That just to name 1 aspect. Let alone him tackling corruption which is a disease in our society.
I can go on and on.
Fact of the matter is that there was no capable leader during that time, and instead of putting Musharraf down for siding with the U.S.
One must realize that it was a matter of tightrope walking, and as Musharraf said so himself in his book, he mastered this art to perfection.
The entities that have been unmasked in our own country after the U.S. had come crashing down in Afghanistan, are dangerous entities and they need to be destroyed. It has to be now to safeguard the future of millions of Pakistanis and the world at large aswell.
Mixed feelings, had the U.S. not interfered, where would we have been now?
These extremists would still be around wandering in and out of Pakistan.
Though they'd be quiet, if you see how they attack our men, women and children, there's no doubt that if they had not struck us now, they would've done so in the future.
But then again, we'd have more stable progress since 2001 if we simply said NO to the Americans.
OR...we would've indeed been bombed back to the stone age, or get caught in a full fledged war with the U.S.
Who knows, who knows..
Musharraf put Pakistan first, I salute him for that.
Though he was not perfect, he is by far the best we've had so far.