President Bush’s democracy agenda, the argument goes, is radical, hopeless, failed, dangerous and destabilizing. And he is a hypocrite for not applying it vigorously enough in Pakistan; the administration, it seems, should be more principled and energetic in pursuing a discredited foreign policy. But perhaps the need for freedom is not so discredited after all.

Pakistan has always been among the hardest of the hard cases when it comes to democracy — with its volatile combination of military rule, borderland terrorist havens and the Bomb. In the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, few questioned the need for cooperation with President Pervez Musharraf in the Afghan campaign or the fight against al-Qaeda. And Pakistani cooperation was real, even though, as one administration official now recalls, “everyone knew they could have done more.”

Immediately after Musharraf’s imposition of emergency rule this month, the options were also limited. The administration could have urged the Pakistani military to overthrow Musharraf — or pressured him to get back on track by restoring civil liberties, taking off his uniform and conducting quick, fair elections. President Bush took the latter course — and would have been attacked as impulsive and intrusive if he had pushed for immediate regime change.