It is being said that Gen. Pervez Musharraf, America's favourite dictator, may have miscalculated American reaction to his declaration of a state of emergency. On the contrary, in calling Washington's bluff, he has calculated the odds only too well.
The United States, Canada and other NATO allies have left themselves little choice but to keep backing him to let him continue his war on terror, however intermittently.
Critics may be equally off base in saying that the changed situation in Pakistan may complicate the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan. Arguably, it could help.
The third theme to emerge in the wake of the general's dismissal of senior Supreme Court judges, suspension of media freedoms and the arrests of key opposition figures has been that democracy has been dealt a death blow.
One could say that with a straight face only if one believed that the recent soap operatic return of Benazir Bhutto from exile and her participation in a national election from which she would re-emerge as prime minister were something other than a U.S.-orchestrated plan to give a democratic gloss to the eight-year-old military rule, with Musharraf remaining as president, albeit in civilian clothes.
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