I was looking forward to the New York Times’s editorial on Musharraf’s resignation — it’s the sort of thing Times editorialists like to write knowingly about, and they were reassuringly annoying on the subject.

Musharraf presented the U.S. with a classic foreign-policy dilemma: He’s a pretty bad guy, but a bad guy not much interested in hurting Americans and sometimes useful in fighting much worse guys who are much more interested in hurting Americans. Also, it’s not like there was a Pakistani Thomas Jefferson waiting in the wings. And when Bad Things Happen, whether it’s a subcontinental dictator behaving badly or a hurricane blowing ashore, we can count on the Times to answer the important question: “How is this Bush’s fault?”

For seven years, President Bush underwrote Mr. Musharraf’s dictatorship.

Really? For seven years, President Bush underwrote Musharraf? What, personally? Surely that is not what the Times means to imply. Setting aside that Congress makes appropriations and therefore can cut off foreign aid at any time of its own choosing, what’s this about seven years? The U.S. has been giving Pakistan foreign aid since 1951, which, as even English majors can appreciate, is more than seven years. Musharraf came to power during the Clinton presidency. The clever, knowing editorialists at the Times, steeped in knowledge and nuance, surely have heard the saying that Pakistan depends upon the “Three A’s: Allah, Army, and America.” And do they not appreciate that the nearly 60 years of aid we’ve provided to Pakistan helped build the military that made Musharraf’s coup possible? For the current crop of Times editorialists, history begins with a hanging chad somewhere in Florida, and every scraped knee on Planet Earth is an excuse for burning Bush. If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it … it’s because Bush failed to listen to the New York Times. Poor tree!

You can argue that U.S. aid shouldn’t have been reinstated while Musharraf remained in power, you can argue that U.S. aid is wasted, misspent, and abused, you can argue that the aid we offered Pakistan in exchange for their assistance in our anti-terrorism/anti-Taliban efforts was a bad trade-off. You can argue that we shouldn’t offer foreign aid at all. But you really can’t argue that Bush unilaterally “underwrote Mr. Musharraf’s dictatorship.” Because that’s poppycock.

For more on what the U.S. Agency for International Development (U.S. AID) has spent on Pakistan, see here.