Welcome Home, Pervez Musharraf The Great Leader Of Pakistan

[RazPaK]

You are correct in that Musharraf should not be singled out. The other thieves should also be put on trial.

Kargil was a blatantly rogue act, and Musharraf should have put on trial for treason for it. Then he would not have done the next dastardly deed of usurping power. His evil should have been stopped long before that happened.

Had Musharraf been punished for Kargil, he would not have been the one to decide our fate after 9/11 by agreeing to participate either. Allowing him to continue on his selfish and illegal ways landed us in this position.

What would I have done? Such a hypothetical question more than a decade later is difficult to answer, but at least rolling over and playing dead was not the correct strategy, surely, which is what Musharraf did. I would have permitted lines of supply, but I would not have given bases for drone attacks on my own fellow citizens, leaving Pakistan's sovereignty in tatters, that is for sure.

LOL.

Biggest fail argument of the anti Musharraf India lovers.

Pakistan would have been dragged in WoT, whether Pakistan liked it not.

Who would have upheld Pakistani sovereignty then?

Nawaz?

Zardari?

@Oscar?

Fail argument is fail.

 

[Argus Panoptes]

All those supporting Musharraf so blindly would do well to remember his illegal dismissal of courts and the NRO and all the disasters it caused. Also, he will fade away as he will not be able to mislead enough people to find traction in the elections.

Musharraf is a FAIL himself.

 

[BATMAN]

All those supporting Musharraf so blindly would do well to remember his illegal dismissal of courts and the NRO and all the disasters it caused. Also, he will fade away as he will not be able to mislead enough people to find traction in the elections.

Musharraf is a FAIL himself.

NRO president is acceptable, but not the NRO!

Dismissal of courts was totally legal.. imposition of emergency was within the jurisdiction of a president!

FAIL FAIL FAIL

 

[blain2]

All those supporting Musharraf so blindly would do well to remember his illegal dismissal of courts and the NRO and all the disasters it caused. Also, he will fade away as he will not be able to mislead enough people to find traction in the elections.

Musharraf is a FAIL himself.

Ok he is a failure but you speak as if Pakistani politicians are a bunch of winners. Can you name me one on the horizon who has been a success? One is untried, the other two (and their parties) have been repeat dismal failures. So why go off about Musharraf only as if you have a track record of proven statesmen and leaders.

 

[blain2]

You are correct in that Musharraf should not be singled out. The other thieves should also be put on trial.

Kargil was a blatantly rogue act, and Musharraf should have put on trial for treason for it. Then he would not have done the next dastardly deed of usurping power. His evil should have been stopped long before that happened.

Had Musharraf been punished for Kargil, he would not have been the one to decide our fate after 9/11 by agreeing to participate either. Allowing him to continue on his selfish and illegal ways landed us in this position.

What would I have done? Such a hypothetical question more than a decade later is difficult to answer, but at least rolling over and playing dead was not the correct strategy, surely, which is what Musharraf did. I would have permitted lines of supply, but I would not have given bases for drone attacks on my own fellow citizens, leaving Pakistan's sovereignty in tatters, that is for sure.

If Musharraf's Kargil act was a rogue one and he was deserving of punishment then the same should have applied to FM Ayub and prior to that the Pakistani leadership under Quaid-e-Azam who sent Pakistani troops to take over the very same terrain that was visited by our troops in 1999.

Neither of the previous two actions, prior to the 1999 one, were approved by an elected parliament so why such righteous sounding pronouncements about the latest (1999) Kargil affair?

Kargil is across the LoC which is not the IB. Had Musharraf been successful, NS would have been blowing his own trumpet like no other because you very well know, victory has many fathers.

I would have permitted lines of supply, but I would not have given bases for drone attacks on my own fellow citizens, leaving Pakistan's sovereignty in tatters, that is for sure.

The drones that fly and hit our citizens come in from Afghanistan and even when they were taking off from the PAF bases, the Americans had redundant bases setup in Afghanistan and it was a matter of time they would have moved them as initially our infrastructure was better than what they had available in Afghanistan. There is/was no stopping of such attacks given that they are in response to the succor that is provided to anti-ISAF forces from our tribal areas. The simple point is that you cannot limit your analysis to what Musharraf did because it is a very easy out for his detractors.

You need to think this one through and any which way you think through this, you will realize that no option was a good one for Pakistan and you should be thankful that you were not in a position to permit anything.

Had Pakistan rejected the American demands, the pressure as well as subversive activities would have been carried out against mainland Pakistan. Quetta, which remains immune to overt foreign attacks to this day, would have been targeted and if like Imran Khan, your thought process just ends at us shooting down their UAVs with our aircraft, then you have not thought this one through.

You give lines of supply to the ISAF, suddenly you become an aider and abettor and in the eyes of the right wing elements, so you are no different than Musharraf. Lets suggest you don't even give the supply lines to the ISAF/US, now you become branded state sponsors of terrorists. There are about another 20 or so permutations of this gaming process that one needs to go through to understand the challenges of making calls that would have satisfied everyone.

Its nice and easy for us to condemn Musharraf and dump all the errors of judgement on him, but the reality is that there is not a leader in Pakistan who could have done better, worse yes for sure, but not better under the circumstances.

 

[bala]

All those supporting Musharraf so blindly would do well to remember his illegal dismissal of courts and the NRO and all the disasters it caused. Also, he will fade away as he will not be able to mislead enough people to find traction in the elections.

Musharraf is a FAIL himself.

So who you think will be successful? Like I said all you guys wanted Zardari, everyone said "Zardari, Zardari, Zardari!"

Then Zardari became useless, Musharraf is considered corrupt and fail, so honestly who do you think will succeed?

Also. I see your signature "no electric, no gass, and no water" - I think the country needs to sort its needs out, the people need to work on sorting this out rather than pointing fingers at the politicians.

Honestly, look at it this way guys - you are in charge of a whole country. If you make 1 decision 40% of the people dont like it yet 60% people do, if you make another decision 55% like and 45% dislike - there is no way for you to to please EVERYONE.

If you think they sit on their jacks on high wages in kotya doing mauja, it aint all like that. Look at Musharraf - the poor bloke ran the country for 9 years, and hid for the last 4 years due to death threats and a million other threats. How do you think he feels? Put yourself in his shoes for one minute.

When a wrong decision is made he is booed and hailed. But at these times we never look at any right decisions made and we say "what right decision did he make?! huh!!"

Personally I think we need an Ayatullah like Iran who sets the agenda and the Presidents do what is on the agenda. This is why Iran has succeeded even with the sanctions imposed by God playing US.

 

[SQ8]

Ok he is a failure but you speak as if Pakistani politicians are a bunch of winners. Can you name me one on the horizon who has been a success? One is untried, the other two (and their parties) have been repeat dismal failures. So why go off about Musharraf only as if you have a track record of proven statesmen and leaders.

This sums to the argument that Musharraf is the lesser of evils. Yet, the gauge being used for him( replacing him with Benzair or Nawaz in his role) means that the product of 67 years of military leadership development is only so much better than equivalent of leadership produced within 11 years of actual democracy?
That being able to take unitary decision that lead to the death of over 50000 Pakistanis(lets forget the Kargil fiasco in this calculation) in the long term and massive losses in wealth and security is acceptable when compared to a bunch of thugs who end up making similar mistakes.. and who have been brought back in BY this very man who COULD have prevented this from happening; he is still the better man makes it sound like a Catch-22 equation.
So the only reason his critique is then equivalent to blasphemy is because he seems to be the best we have out of the lot???

i.e to support Musharraf is to support his decisions to bring back the very people we are glad to be rid off in the first place. So either we assume that he has reformed(hasnt worked out so well in the case of Nawaz or Zardari or any of these politicians), or we assume that apart from the addiction of power, the man has little other reason..and our gauge of him must be his past performance.
In that case, we can assume that while he may be able to wring in the technocrats and come up with a quick temporary fix for our economy; his approach on policies such as the WoT and Balochistan may lead to further fragmentation in the country,

The only alternative choice is then IK, who is the untried factor and rather inexperienced in the intricacies of the corridors of power.
An ideal solution would have been a APML and PTI alliance, but IK refers to Musharraf in no sugary terms.. and being seen with a former dictator is scandalous.

 

[SQ8]

When a wrong decision is made he is booed and hailed. But at these times we never look at any right decisions made and we say "what right decision did he make?! huh!!"[/B]

Actually this is the biggest issue in Pakistani politics.
it is never a zero-sum game.

Even Zardari for all his ills, has completing 5 years government to his credit. along with political reforms(on the surface anyway)
Nawaz Sharif has the motorway.

At the end of day it's your priority what you choose and the same goes for some voters in the US.
Many Pro Obama voters saw everything wrong with the republican party and were unwilling to accept any good deeds by them and the same went for many republicans.
Each saw themselves as the only saviors for the nation.

If Musharraf is the lesser of all evils, then by all means he deserves a vote. But it then remains on what sensitivity did you gauge his performance. If the short term economic benifits are important to you along with image improvement of the country.. then Musharraf should take your vote.
If the country's sovereignty is important along with protecting the rights of citizens, then the views about him will be different.
NO one can claim to be unbiased in voting since that means they have no interests. A person who claims to have no or equal interests or center has little say in anything. It will not matter to him/her what happens to the country.
Everybody promises electricity, power and so on.. but who has the potential to achieve that? who has the track record?
Based on that one can decide their votes.. BUT is that how Pakistanis vote?
I sincerely doubt that..

LOL.

Biggest fail argument of the anti Musharraf India lovers.

This is a new logic..

Pehle hi Im trying to figure out exactly how you came up with the "India-Lover" moniker(are you racist ? or some unique gauge)

Ab Anti-Musharraf is also Pro-India.

I mean.. Wah.. Logic ki daad deni chahiye.

 

[blain2]

That being able to take unitary decision that lead to the death of over 50000 Pakistanis(lets forget the Kargil fiasco in this calculation) in the long term and massive losses in wealth and security is acceptable when compared to a bunch of thugs who end up making similar mistakes.. and who have been brought back in BY this very man who COULD have prevented this from happening; he is still the better man makes it sound like a Catch-22 equation.

It was not his decision that lead to the deaths of 50,000 Pakistanis, rather the war in Afghanistan. Lets understand the basic premise for the war that is being waged by the TTP against our people. The TTP would have targeted civilians or Musharraf, dictator or elected government because they are diametrically opposed to anything that differs from their point of view. Pakistan could not stop the American invasion, once the invasion happened, people from Pakistan started supporting the resistance. Now any government in Pakistan would have had to respond to this because the US action was given cover by the UN and even if a democratically elected government had made this choice, the TTP would have hit us as they continue to do so disregarding an existing democratically elected government's mandate.

Lets keep the internal NRO issue out of this because that is one of domestic politics.

The death of 50,000 Pakistanis is also a result of the extremism that has been slowly but surely building up in Pakistan and we are essentially in the same situation as Egypt and Algeria in the early 90s. We are coming to a head with these elements and no amount of ***** footing around these chaps will let you get off without getting our citizens killed.

Maulana Fazlur Rehman, the so called champion of the TTP, himself will become a target of this TTP menace because he will differ with them so this issue is not one of a single man's making. Our religious extremists are out and about to dominate and they will pick a fight with you whether you are a secular, sufi, ahle-hadith, shia or what not. Its assimilation and if not, then its suicide bombings to weaken your resolve.

 

[SQ8]

It was not his decision that lead to the deaths of 50,000 Pakistanis, rather the war in Afghanistan. Lets understand the basic premise for the war that is being waged by the TTP against our people. The TTP would have targeted civilians or Musharraf, dictator or elected government because they are diametrically opposed to anything that differs from their point of view. Pakistan could not stop the American invasion, once the invasion happened, people from Pakistan started supporting the resistance. Now any government in Pakistan would have had to respond to this because the US action was given cover by the UN and even if a democratically elected government had made this choice, the TTP would have hit us as they continue to do so disregarding an existing democratically elected government's mandate.

Lets keep the internal NRO issue out of this because that is one of domestic politics.

The death of 50,000 Pakistanis is also a result of the extremism that has been slowly but surely building up in Pakistan and we are essentially in the same situation as Egypt and Algeria in the early 90s. We are coming to a head with these elements and no amount of ***** footing around these chaps will let you get off without getting our citizens killed.

Maulana Fazlur Rehman, the so called champion of the TTP, himself will become a target of this TTP menace so this issue is not one of a single man's making. Our religious extremists are out and about to dominate and they will pick a fight with you whether you are a secular, sufi, ahle-hadith, shia or what not. Its assimilation and if not, then its suicide bombings to weaken your resolve.

Again, that premise that the WoT would have happened anyway is acceptable. But to theorize that no matter what , it would have gone in exactly the same pattern seems far fetched. After all, it means giving guarantees that ALL other stakeholders in the WoT would have continued to do exactly what they did and NO more and NO less.

The TTP did not exist as the cohesive unit in the WoT, and even if they did and joining the WoT was inevitable. Then the actions taken up in the months immediately following the WoT held the key for reducing the rise and spread of extremism within Pakistan.
To say that Musharraf took the only or best decisions within those times is to imply that regardless of countless studies and evaluations by commentators from diverse fields all over the world(past and present alike) on how decisions should/could have been made that would have improved the outcome, those lessons are irrelevant today.

Then the presumption becomes that Musharraf took the best decisions(since he was the only one there and only one with authority) due to the hand of destiny. And given the Choice to go back, he would still make the same decisions. That he is infact capable of no better.

In that case(considering that he took those decisions under those conditions then), we can hypothesize his decisions now as well.
such as
He improved the economy through promotion of consumerism by handing it over to seasoned technocrats, he may do the same.
or
He compromised on principles with corrupt politicians then, he may do so now.
or
He refused to cede in the ego to another egoistic man in the Chief Justice, he may do the same again.

I believe the question lies then in how much he has learnt from his mistakes, and how much of his arrogance still lives on.
To brand him as the best then, when compared to say the unknown in IK is unfair. Because he has a track record we can predict and know where he will make crucial mistakes and where he may be successful.

In essence, to support Musharraf is to support the known lesser devil than the unknown whatever.
But in my case, I have a problem with the very class known as "devils".

 

[Developereo]

Pakistan would have been dragged in WoT, whether Pakistan liked it not.

I honestly can't understand this refrain against Musharraf's actions post 9/11.

Remember Bush's words "you are either with us or against us"?

If Pakistan had refused, the US would have declared Pakistan an ally of the Taliban and acted accordingly. The US administration was under tremendous domestic pressure to show a visible response to 9/11 and the US had practically a blank check from the UN.

 

[Badbadman]

[SUB][/SUB]

Its jst 5000 lives as coletrl damge in drone strikes?
& its 45000 in terrosist attacks?
Don't lie, & stop stupid prapoganda?
So all you want to give pakistan in the hands of TTp & make mullha FM new PM?lol
Wow, wht a vission?lol

Thing is why even those 5000 had to die just because one general sitting in Rawalpindi wants to get a pat on his back.
You created TTP, you should know what to do. Why getting worried my friend.
Propaganda! Drones are not comin over India.

 

[Vinod2070]

Biggest fail argument of the anti Musharraf India lovers.

Interesting choice of words.

So anyone "anti Musharraf" is one of "India lovers"? And that is supposedly the biggest handicap one can have?

Same as being "secular" (la-deeniyat) or "democrazy lovers"?

Even Imran is supposedly an "India lover" now. So some have got disenchanted now with him.

The natives need to start controlling Pakistan's destiny, if you know what I mean.

 

[Argus Panoptes]

Ok he is a failure but you speak as if Pakistani politicians are a bunch of winners. Can you name me one on the horizon who has been a success? One is untried, the other two (and their parties) have been repeat dismal failures. So why go off about Musharraf only as if you have a track record of proven statesmen and leaders.

As I have said before, there is no need to single out Musharraf. Others have their own share of failures to be reckoned.

But the fact should be kept in mind that Musharraf's tenure as COAS and subsequent dictatorship were a disaster for Pakistan.

If Musharraf's Kargil act was a rogue one and he was deserving of punishment then the same should have applied to FM Ayub and prior to that the Pakistani leadership under Quaid-e-Azam who sent Pakistani troops to take over the very same terrain that was visited by our troops in 1999.

Neither of the previous two actions, prior to the 1999 one, were approved by an elected parliament so why such righteous sounding pronouncements about the latest (1999) Kargil affair?

Kargil is across the LoC which is not the IB. Had Musharraf been successful, NS would have been blowing his own trumpet like no other because you very well know, victory has many fathers.

So let me understand this: You admit that the Army has acted illegally without parliamentary approval many times before, so it should be given a pass for doing it yet again? All those who have acted illegally should be charged with treason, including those those responsible for the actions you mention too. What happened in Turkey needs to happen in Pakistan too.

There was no way Musharraf's foolhardy action in Kargil would have been successful. Kashmir's LoC may not be an international border, but any changes on the ground will not be through a military action but political. In fact, our Army's leadership would do well to get this through their heads once and for all: The situation in Kashmir will not be changed by direct military action or by covert non-state actors. It will be resolved, whenever it is, politically, and politically alone.

The drones that fly and hit our citizens come in from Afghanistan and even when they were taking off from the PAF bases, the Americans had redundant bases setup in Afghanistan and it was a matter of time they would have moved them as initially our infrastructure was better than what they had available in Afghanistan. There is/was no stopping of such attacks given that they are in response to the succor that is provided to anti-ISAF forces from our tribal areas. The simple point is that you cannot limit your analysis to what Musharraf did because it is a very easy out for his detractors.

You need to think this one through and any which way you think through this, you will realize that no option was a good one for Pakistan and you should be thankful that you were not in a position to permit anything.

Had Pakistan rejected the American demands, the pressure as well as subversive activities would have been carried out against mainland Pakistan. Quetta, which remains immune to overt foreign attacks to this day, would have been targeted and if like Imran Khan, your thought process just ends at us shooting down their UAVs with our aircraft, then you have not thought this one through.

You give lines of supply to the ISAF, suddenly you become an aider and abettor and in the eyes of the right wing elements, so you are no different than Musharraf. Lets suggest you don't even give the supply lines to the ISAF/US, now you become branded state sponsors of terrorists. There are about another 20 or so permutations of this gaming process that one needs to go through to understand the challenges of making calls that would have satisfied everyone.

Its nice and easy for us to condemn Musharraf and dump all the errors of judgement on him, but the reality is that there is not a leader in Pakistan who could have done better, worse yes for sure, but not better under the circumstances.

Like Oscar has summarized, Musharraf may be the lesser of the evil choices available, but an evil nonetheless. Talking about hypothetical situations after 9/11 is pointless in the present thread which deals with Musharraf's return, so I will concede to your point that no leader in Pakistan could have done better under the circumstances right after 9/11, just for the sake of not derailing this thread.

=====================================

In order to keep this thread on topic and on track, let me pose these questions:

How can Musharraf possible put together a coalition that has a chance of forming the next government? What are his likely partners, and what common platform can they cobble up that the voters will accept?

 

[W.11]

Pehle hi Im trying to figure out exactly how you came up with the "India-Lover" moniker(are you racist ? or some unique gauge)

Ab Anti-Musharraf is also Pro-India.

I mean.. Wah.. Logic ki daad deni chahiye.

how can he be racist @Oscar bhayya?