Perched in the hot seat on Comedy Central’s farcical news program “The Daily Show,” Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf appeared an unlikely foil for host Jon Stewart’s political satire.

Fresh from a CBS News interview in which he told “60 Minutes” correspondent Steve Kroft that his country was bullied into joining the alliance President Bush cobbled together to wage a war on terror, Musharraf seemed more cynical than funny.

When Stewart sarcastically suggested that Musharraf didn’t mention the Iraq war in his recently published memoir because it has “gone so well,” the Pakistani president deadpanned: “It has led certainly to more extremism and terrorism around the world.”

Then when Musharraf was asked if Bush or Osama bin Laden would win a popular vote in his country, he answered: “I think they’ll both lose miserably.”

That sounds like a laugh line that might have been written by Democratic Party head Howard Dean – not a Bush ally.

In fact, it seems that the war Bush launched in Iraq while bin Laden – the man who ordered the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on this country – was thought to be hiding out in Afghanistan has few fans beyond our borders.

Musharraf, the leader of one of the first countries to join what Bush calls the “coalition of the willing,” told Kroft that he was pressured into becoming this country’s ally in the war on terror.

Musharraf recounted to Kroft how in the wake of the Sept. 11 attack his country’s intelligence director told him that then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said Pakistan would be bombed back into the Stone Age if it didn’t join the coalition.

“It was a threat, certainly,” he said of remarks that Armitage denies having made. “I took it that the United States, after whatever happened to the World Trade Center, would be a wounded country – a wounded sole superpower and they are going to do anything to counter and to punish the perpetrators. Now, if we stand in the way of that, we are going to suffer.”

Musharraf’s revelation is but the most recent evidence that one of the biggest casualties of Bush’s war on terror has been this nation’s standing around the world. While the Pakistani leader felt compelled to join Bush’s coalition, just 27 percent of his people have a favorable opinion of the United States, according to a recent Pew Global Attitudes survey.

Even more chilling, when asked what is the greatest danger to world peace, more people in Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, India, Russia, China, Great Britain, France, Jordan and Spain, picked the U.S. military presence in Iraq over the current government of Iran.

In April, The Nation reported that 17 countries have dropped out of the coalition the Bush administration forged, and just two of our allies – Great Britain and South Korea – now have more than 1,000 troops serving in Iraq.

Good riddance you say to those fair-weather friends.

Well, while it might be easy to dismiss that loss of faith, what should we make of this: Six in 10 Iraqis approve of attacks on U.S.-led forces and even more want American troops out of their country, a poll taken in early September for the University of Maryland revealed.

That’s right, a majority of the people whose freedom Bush says U.S. forces are fighting for in Iraq think the killing and maiming of American troops is a good thing. Maybe that’s because 75 percent of Iraqis said they believe the Bush administration wants to establish permanent military bases in their oil-rich country, the poll found.

All of this suggests that Bush’s war in Iraq not only lacks broad-based support among America’s allies, but also among the Iraqi people.

While it is relatively easy to cajole the leader of a Third World country like Pakistan, it is far more difficult for the Bush administration to impose its will on the people of Pakistan – or Iraq.