2 posts tagged “pakistan”
Benazir Bhutto [Mark Steyn]
Benazir Bhutto's return to Pakistan had a mad recklessness about it which give today's events a horrible inevitability. As I always say when I'm asked about her, she was my next-door neighbor for a while - which affects a kind of intimacy, though in fact I knew her only for sidewalk pleasantries. She was beautiful and charming and sophisticated and smart and modern, and everything we in the west would like a Muslim leader to be - though in practice, as Pakistan's Prime Minister, she was just another grubby wardheeler from one of the world's most corrupt political classes.
Since her last spell in power, Pakistan has changed, profoundly. Its sovereignty is meaningless in increasingly significant chunks of its territory, and, within the portions Musharraf is just about holding together, to an ever more radicalized generation of young Muslim men Miss Bhutto was entirely unacceptable as the leader of their nation. "Everyone’s an expert on Pakistan, a faraway country of which we know everything," I wrote last month. "It seems to me a certain humility is appropriate." The State Department geniuses thought they had it all figured out. They'd arranged a shotgun marriage between the Bhutto and Sharif factions as a "united" "democratic" "movement" and were pushing Musharraf to reach a deal with them. That's what diplomats do: They find guys in suits and get 'em round a table. But none of those representatives represents the rapidly evolving reality of Pakistan. Miss Bhutto could never have been a viable leader of a post-Musharraf settlement, and the delusion that she could have been sent her to her death. Earlier this year, I had an argument with an old (infidel) boyfriend of Benazir's, who swatted my concerns aside with the sweeping claim that "the whole of the western world" was behind her. On the streets of Islamabad, that and a dime'll get you a cup of coffee.
As I said, she was everything we in the west would like a Muslim leader to be. We should be modest enough to acknowledge when reality conflicts with our illusions. Rest in peace, Benazir.
I was watching C-Span this morning, not ten minutes ago, getting ready to do a number on a peppermint pie leftover from Christmas. I love peppermint pie with something approaching unnatural strength. Some boring Senate thing was on the screen, but as I read the ticker I was shocked and appalled to read
The woman was a political entity before my time, surely. And she was pretty much fired and charged with corruption in absentia, but for a political leader to be assassinated in such a way is always a shock. These are the people who are positioned to keep things running, who are connected with the movers and shakers in any country. No matter their politics, when they are killed a country has lost a resource.
Pakistan's only hope to pull itself out of the muck of radical Islamic theocracy and into a stable constitutional state is that its political leaders are allowed to make their case without fear of being murdered. I don't believe Pervez Musharraf is responsible for this attack, but I do believe that this highlights just how much control the central government in Pakistan has. That is, not much. When (not if) this blows up into a riotous mob, Musharraf will be hard pressed to keep things from devolving into further bloodshed. He's managed to hold on so far, but now he's got a martyr on his hands.
This is big news. Big news.
Damn these people for their ignorance, and I thank God (not Allah, he's obviously been on vacation) that I live in the United States of America. Despite what its detractors say, the US doesn't kill political opposition, and we have the stability to maintain the rule of law even when the opposition is dangerously close to being John Edwards.
Update: Ha. I forgot. They have nukes, too!
