US support to Musharraf 'miscalculated': Obama

The United States' decision “to put all [its] eggs in the Musharraf basket” was a result of miscalculation, Democratic presidential frontrunner Barrack Obama said on Saturday.
"There is a sizable middle class [in Pakistan] that believes in rule of law and believes in a government that is accountable to the people,” Obama said in an interview with Newsweek. “Our willingness to put all our eggs in the Musharraf basket without understanding this other tradition, and without understanding that our choice in a place like Pakistan is not simply [between] military dictatorship or Islamic rule, led us to make a series of miscalculations that has weakened our fight against terrorism in the region.”
He said the US foreign policy should not focus only on ties with the rulers of underdeveloped countries. “In a country like Pakistan, if we are not thinking about that [peasant] that's working in the fields, or the young man who is a day labourer in Karachi, [if] we think that interactions with the Oxford-educated Pakistani in Parliament somehow gives us an insight into the country, we can be really mistaken and can make a series of misjudgements.”
He said he noticed problems of corruption and unemployment in Pakistan during his trip to the country in the early 1980s, and “saw modernity standing side by side with ways of life and economies that have been unchanged for centuries”.
“The people of Pakistan [should] broadly believe that America isn't seeing them simply as a tool to carry out our foreign policy and meet our self interest, but rather [seeing their] aspirations as legitimate ... and part of a broader set of aspirations in improving the quality of life in Pakistan and opening up opportunity to people, the more likely we are to get cooperation when it comes to dealing with terrorists, and the more likely we are to have legitimacy when we need to take military action.”