Not quite a quarter of a century ago, there was this presidential campaign between incumbent Jimmy Carter and challenger Ronald Reagan. The campaign was fought out against a backdrop of fifty or more Americans being held "hostage" in Iran. Reagan was able to make a big thing of this, especially since Carter's single attempt to rescue the hostages ― an attempt which, perhaps luckily for them, failed when it foundered out in bad desert weather, with significant loss of life among the would-be rescuers ― came a cropper. Reagan won the election, and the new fundamentalist government in Iran eventually released the hostages just in time to celebrate Reagan's inauguration in January.
You may suppose that, after that, a number of stories made the rounds about secret meetings between leaders of the Republican party (George H. W. Bush, who later became himself one president and father of another, is often mentioned in this context) and leaders of Iran, for the purpose of convincing Iran not to release the hostages until after the election. No serious person considered those stories anything more than hot air, perhaps gripes by Democrats who lost the election.
One wonders what to make of today's revelation, in a New Republic article (posted at the NR's website, but not available to dead-tree readers for a week or so yet), in which it is claimed the the current president, another Bush, has begun pushing the Pakistani government of dictator General Pervez Musharraf to bring such scofflaws as al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and Taliban boss Mullah Mohammed Omar to justice -- before the November election. In fact, it appears that preferential target dates for producing one or more of these men, preferably dead, have been mentioned to the Pakistanis ― one set of dates coinciding with the Democratic National Convention. Apparently, if you can't beat 'em, drown 'em out with your own noise.
The article's authors (John B. Judis, Spencer Ackerman & Massoud Ansari) suggest that Musharraf is eager to comply, being faced with a carrot and a stick ― the carrot being the sale to Pakistan of F-16 fighter planes and the stick being a delayed but potentially forceful American reaction to Musharraf's pardoning of Pakistani nuclear physicist A.Q. Khan, who had directed nuclear technology to several governments of which we do not approve.
The authors consider this emphasis on capturing (or, preferably, killing ― without, of course, making them unrecognizable) the above-mentioned villains as a laudable ambition, but wonder why there was no such emphasis in the years 2002 and 2003, when it would have been equally laudable.
It might also make one wonder whether this attempt by the Republicans to fit international events to an election timetable is a brilliant new political initiative ... or whether it's not the first time.