Pakistan’s Dictator and Terror Rumors

Re “In War, Strange Bedfellows Welcomed,” Opinion, Sept. 30:

Robert Kaplan believes that we should ignore Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s overthrow of the democratically elected government of Pakistan, claiming his dictatorship is preferable to the “notoriously corrupt” but elected government of Nawaz Sharif. This is not just wrong but dangerous. Democracies take decades to take root in a country. Corruption is often an inevitable and unfortunate consequence of the process; we have no further to look for proof than our own history books. To imagine that Musharraf’s regime will be less corrupt than the democratic government is disingenuous and unsubstantiated. Only democracy can provide the means to correct mistakes and problems; a military dictatorship does not.

Furthermore, the whole reason we are in this mess is owing to the repressive dictatorships of the Middle East, dictatorships that have left millions of people in the Dark Ages, mired in poverty and ignorance, dictatorships like Musharraf’s that we now have to embrace in order to combat this threat. America must start exporting its political system along with its fast-food franchises and movies. Democracy is and always has been the only thing that can ever save any people from tyranny and oppression.

Jennifer Horsman

Laguna Beach

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Re “Pakistanis Buy Into the Conspiracy Theories,” Sept. 29: Your article describes how the Pakistanis believe that the Jews conspired to bomb the World Trade Center. Again we see that the “blame it on the Jews” syndrome is raising its ugly head. Blame it on the Jews and throw the United States government in for good measure. Will the world buy it? I think not.

Jerry Gallob

Chatsworth

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“Hoaxes, Rumors and Wishful Thinking Spawned by Trauma” (Sept. 28) should have been printed right next to the Sept. 29 Pakistan rumor article. As the first of these articles shows, the problem is not illiteracy, not a Third World phenomenon, but ignorance, bias and lack of critical thinking. People still close to an aural society can learn a great deal through access to radio and television and discussion--if those are not censored.

Even in the U.S. we have a great number of biased and/or sloppy media outlets. And those media outlets that do aspire to higher standards still sometimes fall short. We, like Pakistan and many other countries, also have no shortage of people who believe what they want to believe, never mind the demonstrable facts.

Connie Wills

Pasadena