That’s the Bush Administration for you. Disastrous policies? Bankrupt nations? Dying, starving people? Assassinations? Civil unrest? Wars?? Zombie leader doesn’t mind. It’s all good. The response is to stay the disastrous course. We’ve seen this before, and we see it again now with Pakistan.

Kessler and Wright paint a US foreign policy unchanged by the assassination of erstwhile prime minister Benazir Bhutto, one aimed at propping up controversial strongman Pervez Musharraf — and lone pro-US leader in the country — with hundreds of millions of dollars in aid. Next year, the US will begin a five-year, $750 million plan intended to bring jobs and security to restive border regions.

“Despite anxiety among intelligence officials and experts, however, the administration is only slightly tweaking a course charted over the past 18 months to support the creation of a political center revolving around Musharraf, according to U.S. officials,” the reporters write.

“Plan A still has to work,” a senior administration official involved in Pakistan policy told the paper. “We all have to appeal to moderate forces to come together and carry the election and create a more solidly based government, then use that as a platform to fight the terrorists.”

Bush’s policy remains “wedded” to Musharraf despite warnings from experts and others who say his dictatorial methods are “untenable,” they say. The Pakistani president recently deposed Supreme Court justices who would no go along with his plans.

“This administration has had a disastrous policy toward Pakistan, as bad as the Iraq policy,” Robert Templer of the International Crisis Group told the Post. “They are clinging to the wreckage of Musharraf, flailing around. . . . Musharraf has outlived all possible usage to Pakistan and the United States.”

Replied the US official: “We have a room full of tigers in Pakistan. This is a really complicated situation, and we have to use our influence in a lot of ways but also realize we can’t determine the outcome. We’re not dropping pixie dust on someone to anoint them as the next leader.”

Once again, reminiscent of the unrealistic expectations placed on Iran, the US will hold forth completely unrealistic expectations that moderate forces will magically come together in Pakistan and create a more solidly based government from which to fight the evil terrorists. And to facilitate that, we must support Musharraf! There (brushing hands together). That should do it.

Templer contends that without Musharraf, moderate forces, coming from Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party, Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-N, the moderate Balochistan National Party and the mostly Pashtun Awami National Party, could create a new, more legitimate centrist political space.

The US policy will probably result in the exact opposite of what our leaders say they want to happen. Guess what? They don’t really want the moderates to come together. Bush/Cheney would rather have chaos, because chaos will have much more exciting consequences, like this:

“In the best case for the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and the worst case for the world, Pakistan could fall into such turmoil that the very control of the state could fall into Islamist hands, or Pakistan could effectively fracture — with its massive armaments, including dozens of nuclear weapons, falling into the wrong hands,” J. Alexander Thier, a former UN official told the Post.