General Pervez Musharraf's crackdown on lawyers, judges, and democracy and human rights activists has spawned a flurry of "yes, but . . ." commentary. Yes, we're against what he has done, BUT we need him in the fight against Al Qaeda. Yes, we're against what he has done, but the military is the only force that can hold the country together, and we can't afford to let a nuclear armed state with a significant jihadist element implode. And so forth. Lee Smith's recent article in Slate makes some of these points in defense of Musharraf, among others.

It all reminds me a bit of the statement attributed to Franklin D. Roosevelt with respect to the first Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua: "he's an S.O.B., but at least he's our S.O.B." The enemy of the moment is terrorism, not communism, but one part of the equation is the same: the notion that dictatorships are somehow better equipped than democracies to promote U.S. interests.

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