At a time when Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf is being pilloried almost on a daily basis in the United States as much as he is in Pakistan, with editorials in mainstream newspapers blasting him and Congressional leaders and policy analysts in leading think tanks saying it was time for him to disappear into the horizon, retired Marine General and former Commander CENTCOM, Anthony Zinni, has stood up for him.
Zinni, participating in a conference hosted by The Brookings Institution on The US-Pakistan Strategic Relationship, said, "In the interests of complete honesty, President Musharraf is a good friend and I believe he is a patriot."
"I believe he does what he does and did what he did in the best interests of his country, and I believe there are things that he had done with the economy and other things that are positive. There are other things that I may disagree with and certainly many in the audience will disagree with."
But he reiterated that 'the point that is most important here is what his intentions were and how things came about.'
Zinni, who seemed on a veritable mission to alleviate the image of Musharraf, argued: "We tend to shorthand things in a way that shape an issue and give it maybe the wrong context," and cited as an example "the shorthand in the media is when President Musharraf executed the coup. I think it might have been a coup executed on the military that did not work and may have backfired."
"I certainly do not condone generals taking over the government," he said, defending Musharraf.
Zinni even went to the extent of defending Musharraf in terms of defusing the Kargil crisis, although it is well known that it was Musharraf who launched this military offensive and has even acknowledged now -- although denied at the time -- that it was done in concert with non-State actors such as militant groups being promoted and fomented by Pakistan against India in Jammu and Kashmir.
He recalled: "I was sent back by the last Administration (Clinton administration) to work the preliminaries to try and defuse the situation in Kargil. I will tell you I would have never been able to see the prime minister (then Nawaz Sharif) had it not been for the chief of military brokering the access for me to allow the meeting between the prime minister and President (Clinton) and eventually the defusing of that situation."
And, Zinni argued, "Even if the military did not agree with our approach, the respect was so great that it allowed that to occur and allowed that dialogue to begin and defuse what could have been a very serious situation that would have benefited none of us had it blossomed into something more deadly."
He bemoaned the regular stinging criticism of the Pakistani military in the media and in other quarters such as the US Congress.
"The Pakistani military has suffered over a thousand killed in those Western Provinces along with their security forces, and over twice that many wounded, and yet we are demanding more."
Zinni spoke of how in the beginning Pakistani troops had gone 'up into the hills to do these things and to accomplish missions that may be were seen by their people as not necessarily in their interests, but our way, they did it anyway."
"And did they do it with the kind of equipment with the necessary edge to operate in that very difficult terrain to have an advantage? No."
Zinni said that "having been responsible for US military operations, missions, and relationships in that region, I can tell you that Southwest Asia is not a place where we have many friends and strategic relationships that are any more important than this one. This in fact is probably the most important in that area."
"And, instead of trying to pick and find fault with the relationship, find the fault lines, to let our disagreements wash over and affect the whole relationship, we need to look forward to building greater relationships based on mutual security interests and the interests on creating stability in that region whether it is economic, political or security."
Zinni said both sides have 'been negligent in allowing the differences and allowing those who would try to break that relationship to sort of take the field and get most of the publicity."
"And, it breaks my heart as a military man knowing that military -- having fought side by side with that military (when Pakistani peacekeeping forces along with US Marines that Zinni commanded in Somalia), to see the lack of appreciation for the sacrifices that are being made and I would offer going forward that we need to turn that around," he said.