Readers may remember Frank Rich’s “The Coup at Home” op-ed from last Sunday. In it he makes invidious comparisons between Bush’s America and Pakistan under martial law. An excerpt:

In the six years of compromising our principles since 9/11, our democracy has so steadily been defined down that it now can resemble the supposedly aspiring democracies we’ve propped up in places like Islamabad. Time has taken its toll. We’ve become inured to democracy-lite. That’s why a Mukasey can be elevated to power with bipartisan support and we barely shrug. This is a signal difference from the Vietnam era, and not necessarily for the better. During that unpopular war, disaffected Americans took to the streets and sometimes broke laws in an angry assault on American governmental institutions. The Bush years have brought an even more effective assault on those institutions from within. While the public has not erupted in riots, the executive branch has subverted the rule of law in often secretive increments. The results amount to a quiet coup, ultimately more insidious than a blatant putsch like General Musharraf’s.

Now, yesterday I recorded an episode of Bloggingheads with Rosa Brooks (don’t know when it will be up), my colleague at the LA Times op-ed page. I said that Frank Rich was making unfavorable comparisons between Bush’s America and Musharraf’s Pakistan. I said I though Rich was being absurd. She disagreed, saying that Rich wasn’t saying that at all and besides, it’s basically true (trying to have it both ways like this was one of the more frustrating debating stances she took). Re-reading the piece, I can see why Rosa wanted to focus on what Rich was trying to say — i.e. what he probably thought the point of his column was. But what I had in mind was what he actually said. When I discussed this in today’s episode of WYP with Beinart (hopefully up soon), he basically agreed with my reading. So I was shocked to have Brooks act as if I was completely off my rocker.

So, am I crazy or do the above passages compare America today to Pakistan under Musharraf’s martial law?