A Day Two Dictators Would Die

In our wide-ranging coverage here at Interweb Detritus, the Pakistani political scene ranks almost as highly as bile David Brooks has to spew and references to 80's sitcoms; so, in the spirit of completeness, today--the day that Fidel Castro resigned from a post he didn't even occupy (because a guy whose stock and trade is drawing ejaculate on the faces of Hollywood teenagers reported him dead months ago)--I join the fray and write the political obituary of another dictator, Pervez Musharraf.

I don't have a lot of insight to offer: his cabal of yes-men took a severe blow in yesterday's election, and it looks as though Benazir's PPP will now come to some sort of understanding with the Muslim League and its once-bald/now-resplendent mascot, Nawaz Sharif. A new coalition government will form, and if it can cobble together the two-thirds majority needed to impeach the old Generalissimo, it'll toss him out (provided of course that he pig-headedly resists his political fortunes and sticks around for the ass-beating).

I could speculate what the future holds for a country that has seized onto-- Obamaniacally you could say--"change" as its watchword, only to hale back into office the two previous ruling parties (as some sort of Voltron-esque collaboration): one party, a craven cult of personality, whose fallen leader gave the Taliban succour, and the other, a divisive, provincial (in both senses of the word) joke, whose moronic leader entered a nuclear arms race and garnered Pakistan the title of "world's most dangerous country." I could speculate, but with today's news that the United States has already carried out at least one clandestine, unilateral strike on Pakistan, even I am not willing to follow my dark, cynical heart farther into the abyss.