Re: Shouldn't Musharaf be hanged.....
I am surprised that the thread starter fails to appreciate that Pakistani military dictators and civilian rulers are miles better than some of these Arab and Persian dictators. Yes Zia hanged Bhutto but by and large Pakistani rulers be it civilian or military have n't, cannot and would not go to the same lengths of brutality and ordering summary punishments that you find in some of these middle-eastern and persian societies. You can openly talk against Musharraf in Pakistan (You might get house-arrested! but thats about it), something you won't be able to do in places like Saudi Arabia, Iran and Syria. Even Bhutto seems like an angel when you see some of the crimes committed by Khomeini (his was a blood revolution) and Saddam. In Iran for instance many teenagers are hanged even now for presumed adultery/rape crimes most of which is unproven because I cannot believe for a moment that there are 4 clear witnesses in each alleged adultery case (unless the guilty party are foolish or drunk enough to be doing it out in the open/in a public place!).
Musharraf is a dictator and he should do the honourable thing and resign and give way to a democratically elected PM and President. Yes our politicians have been a huge disappointment in the past and they may still make more mistakes but 'real' democracy is the only way forward and the military should really confine themselves to the barracks. Perhaps it's time to bring back the 8th amendment (introduced by Zia) whereby a civilian president can remove an elected PM (as happened in 1990, 1993 and 1996), not an ideal scenario but it atleast diminishes the likelihood of another military takeover.