If it was ever truly sincere about promoting democracy, the Bush administration has clearly abandoned that policy at this point. In Iraq, the administration has backed an incompetent, quasi-democratic regime that was imposed at gunpoint. In the Palestinian elections, it didn't like the results, and has joined Israel in refusing to even speak to Hamas. In Lebanon, the presence of elected members of the Hezbollah party in the government was used by Bush policymakers to justify giving the green light to Israel's use of U.S.-supplied weaponry to dismantle large parts of the country's infrastructure and inflict large-scale civilian casualties. Not exactly "democracy promotion."

And in Pakistan, where opposition parties have overwhelmed the ruling party of Pervez Musharraf in this week's elections, this step forward for democracy came despite Bush policies, not because of them. When Musharraf imposed emergency rule and jailed opposition figures ranging from the head of the Supreme Court to leading players in the parties of Benazir Bhutto to Nawaz Sharif, the Bush administration made critical noises, but took no action. Calls to suspend military aid were ignored, and State Department spokesperson Richard Boucher described Musharraf as "indispensable" to U.S. interests in the region, as reiterated in an article in today's New York Times.

Now that Musharraf is for all practical purposes about to be dispensed with, the Bush administration needs to take a new approach.

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