Quagmire. That old Vietnam-era adjective is back in the geopolitical lexicon, thanks to the Iraq war. Perhaps it's time to dust off another phrase from that dark era: "Domino effect."

Pakistan is the latest reminder that, far from heading off trouble, the George W. Bush administration's ill-conceived Iraq adventure has set off a chain-reaction that has destabilized the entire arc of what Washington rechristened the Greater Middle East. It's not looking so great at the moment. From Rafah to Rawalpindi, things are grim.

It seems like just yesterday that Washington was preaching the virtues of democracy, having finally recognized that one answer to the unending question, "Why do they hate us?" lay with US support for dictators and tyrants. But the Bush White House abandoned that strategy when "the wrong" people - e.g. Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood - started getting elected.

Americans now faces yet another Hobbesian choice. Continue to back a man who has now shed most - if not all - pretensions of being anything put a strong-armed dictator, thus further alienating the forces of democracy and feeding the strength of the people who are giving shelter to Al Qaeda, or throw in its lot with the forces of change, knowing that "the wrong" people might end up in power.

It's worth remembering that Musharraf went from being a pariah to a partner in the wake of 9/11, when the US decided it needed the Pakistani dictator more than it despised him. That little issue of Pakistan selling nuclear technology to the likes of Libya was forgotten for the greater good.

At the time, like so many dictators around the world, Musharraf used the so-called war on terror to crack down on pesky internal opponents (and access billions in US aid). He is doing the same again now.

But these are not terrorists whose heads are being cracked on Pakistan's streets and who crowd the jails. They are lawyers and journalists and human rights activists who have the temerity to demand the courts be reopened and the rule of law restored. They are the very people upon which a democratic society is built.

The real jihadis, meanwhile, are sitting back and enjoying the show, rightly confident that, as with the invasion of Iraq, an ongoing battle between Musharraf and his political opponents creates the very chaos on which the extremists thrive.