It seems there are a lot of people who just play lip service to democratic beliefs. President Musharraf has the votes to win, and they appear to be overwhelmingly in his favor:

Pakistani military ruler Pervez Musharraf has won a presidential vote, officials and state television said Saturday, despite a court ruling that the result cannot be declared pending legal challenges.

Lawmakers across the country voted throughout the day in a controversial poll that could yet see the US ally’s victory declared invalid by the Supreme Court.

“It’s an overwhelming victory for President Pervez Musharraf,” a government official told AFP on condition of anonymity. State-run television also said that the army General had won.

The final determination is to be Oct 17th, but the politics on the ground seem to be forcing the country to accept the win, or else accept much worse. While the media will be focused on Musharraf and his support of the war on terror, most sane eyes will be looking at the alternative. They will be comparing and contrasting. And this is what they will see:

Anti-Musharraf protesters set fire to an armoured police vehicle and pelted the provincial parliament building with stones in the northwestern city of Peshawar on Saturday while there were small protests in southern Karachi city.

…

Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden urged Pakistanis in a recent video to rise up and wage holy war against Musharraf, sparking fears of a possible militant backlash during the election.

Violence and doing the bidding of a man who leads a movement that is responsible for tens of thousands of massacred Muslims. Democracy or Islamo Fascism. The choice is starkly clear and the fascists are making it clear. The “law” they want is lawyers running through the streets in full riot:

Pakistani police on Saturday fired teargas and baton-charged protesters who tried to storm a provincial parliament during the country’s disputed presidential election, officials said.

Some 500 lawyers burned an effigy of key US ally President Pervez Musharraf and chanted “Go, Musharraf, go!” near the regional parliament in Peshawar, the capital of conservative North West Frontier Province.

The demonstrators set fire to a police armoured car and threw stones at the parliament building, witnesses said.

Television footage showed the vehicle, with its wheels ablaze, smashing through a wall to flee the scene, while a lone lawyer in a black suit thrashed it with a stick.

That won’t play as well as some think. Yes, there is an anti-West faction that spans this globe which is maniacally obsessed with tearing down the West and America. They want the US to lose this war againts Islamo Fascism. But they are a very small, albeit vocal, group. And that is where they are making a mistake.

There is no ground swell of hatred against the US to the point where people would embrace rampant violence in their streets. While America may be disliked (after decades of liberal and socialist propaganda in the media) it is not hated to the point people are willing to die to take it out. What is actually more likely to happen is the same thing that happened to al-Qaeda in Iraq, at a much calmer and reasonable level. al-Qaeda was so brutal and their atrocities so severe even militant minded allies finally turned on them. I think the world is tiring of this war, and they are tiring of the mindless protests which turn violent against the streets of their towns and cities.

The far left is on the verge of repulsing everyone else with the end result being they becoming isolated and marginal. And their hate and frustration will drive them to overreact and start sink in their own death spiral of increasing the very same behavior which turns people off. We can end this conflict the moment the world deals with differences with maturity, respect and within open democratic societies. Those that rail against this path are the ones keeping the conflicts hot. And the world is beginning to notice.

Why else would Pakistan’s elected representatives vote so overwhelmingly for the man all these street protests are about? It seems even Pakistan is making its choice, and it is against Islamo Fascism and their booster-club acolytes.