Albright: Bush policies on Pakistan are 'incoherent' 
President Bush has overseen an "incoherent" US policy towards Pakistan, according to former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who says that the White House has not acted decisively enough to promote democratic rule in that country.
Appearing on MSNBC's Morning Joe program, Albright told host Joe Scarborough that the current situation in Pakistan, where Gen. Pervez Musharraf has imposed martial law and declared a special emergency rule, is due in part to a serious strategy mistake on the part of the Bush administration.
"I do think that there has been an incoherent policy," Albright said after being pressed by Scarborough as to whether President Bush's Pakistan policy was flawed. The former Clinton administration secretary of state said the US had too largely focused on supporting Gen. Musharraf himself -- and had not done enough to help the Pakistani people achieve a democracy.
"Because clearly we are dependent on [Musharraf], but I think that what has not happened is enough push towards a democratic government there," she continued. "That we have just taken for truth everything that Musharraf tells us, and that we should not be in a position where we're just dependent on this one guy without the support of the people of Pakistan."
Musharraf suspended the Pakistani constitution on Nov. 3, fearing the nation's supreme court would find his recent reelection as president to be illegal. Former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, who survived an Oct. 19 assassination attempt after returning to the country from exile, has called for the increasingly unpopular leader to step down.
"Nobody should underestimate the difficulties of Pakistan," Albright said earlier in the program, adding that the US was "in this very bad situation where a country that we are quite dependent on on fighting terrorism and dealing with Afghanistan -- which has a nuclear weapon -- is now in a state of disintegration..."
Previously in the segment, Albright had voiced her support for Sen. Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential primary and outlined how she believed the US could improve is image internationally.
"Well, I think we have to restore our reputation, which has been deeply damaged by Iraq mostly, because we went into a war that we didn't have the proper intelligence on and that certainly has turned out badly," she remarked. "I think that what has to happen is the United States does have to be a major power, but I think we need to do things in cooperation with other countries. Mostly, we have to change the face of America that is viewed publicly, which is a country that is still identified with issues such as Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo."
Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) echoed many of Albright's views on US policy towards Pakistan in a Tuesday blog entry at Huffington Post.
"[W]e should refocus U.S. assistance to Pakistan so it is more aligned with the needs of the Pakistani people and less with a military leader who has undermined democracy," wrote Feingold. "Only a comprehensive foreign policy -- one that moves beyond the administration's myopic, country-by-country approach -- will make Pakistan, and in turn the U.S., more secure. If we fail to take that approach, we will have failed to learn the painful lessons of history and will be bound to repeat them..."
The following video is from MSNBC's Morning Joe, broadcast on November 13, 2007.
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