Andrew Bacevich once again goes after Bush for his failed foreign adventures using the US military and political power to force countries to become democratic. The latest mess -- and murder -- in Pakistan is further proof that the current administration has been wholly inept and, indeed, dangerous in its actions. They never had the power they thought they did. They just had enough power (and ideologically-driven ignorance) to make messes, one after another. The latest manipulations in Pakistan cost Benazir Bhutto her life and created a very serious situation which the US can't reverse.
Faced with the prospect of "losing" Pakistan, what should the world's sole superpower do? Despite Musharraf's flaws, should Washington back him to the hilt as the only alternative to chaos? Or should Bush commit the United States without reservation to building a strong democracy in Pakistan?
To pose such questions is to presume that decisions made in Washington will decisively influence the course of events in Islamabad. Yet the lesson to be drawn from the developments of the last several days -- and from U.S. involvement in Pakistan over the course of decades -- suggests just the opposite: The United States has next to no ability to determine Pakistan's fate.
How the crisis touched off by Bhutto's assassination will end is impossible to predict, although the outcome is likely to be ugly. Yet this much we can say with confidence: That outcome won't be decided in the White House. Once again, as Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, "events are in the saddle, and ride mankind," with those events reducing the most powerful man in the world to the status of spectator.
At the beginning of his second term, Bush spoke confidently of the United States sponsoring a global democratic revolution "with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world." Ever since that hopeful moment, developments across the greater Middle East -- above all, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and on the West Bank -- have exposed the very real limits of U.S. wisdom and power.
Now the virtual impotence of the U.S. in the face of the crisis enveloping Pakistan -- along with its complicity in creating that crisis -- ought to discredit once and for all any notions of America fixing the world's ills.
Bush dreamed of managing history. It turns out that he cannot even manage Pakistan. Thus does the Author of Liberty mock the pretensions of those who presume to understand his intentions and to interpret his will.
