Posted on 12/28/2007 7:12:47 AM PST by claudiustg
The world was stunned (but not surprised) by the death of Benazir Bhutto on Thursday as one more Islamic terrorist did what Islamic terrorists do routinely.
Bhutto died in a gun and bomb attack in Rawalpindi following a political rally at which she had spoken. The former prime minister had bravely, and somewhat recklessly, returned to the country which she led in the 1990s, and was certainly smart enough to know what she was getting herself into.
She was a Westernized woman in the nation which most thoroughly exemplifies radical Islam, and thus had a death sentence on her the minute she dared to enter the public square without a full head scarf, let alone had the audacity to run for prime minister again. She already had survived a suicide bomb attack that killed 120 people when she returned to Pakistan earlier this year, and this latest attack would not have been the last if it had failed.
Now, the question is what will happen to Pakistan, and the world, as a result of this assassination. It is not improper to consider the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria as an historic counterpoint to this modern murder. Ferdinand was killed in 1914 in Sarajevo, a Bosnian city dominated by Muslims in a country that had long been part of the Ottoman Empire. Indeed, the fractious nature of Eastern Europe in those days was not unlike the tribal mix of modern Pakistan and Afghanistan. The assassins of Ferdinand had a narrow political goal in mind, but set in motion the gears that led inevitably to the larger bloodbath of World War I. It is easy to imagine a scenario where Bhutto’s death could likewise lead inevitably to chaos.
The United States mourns the loss of an ally, but it is pointless to talk now about Bhutto’s contributions to democracy in Pakistan or the Islamic world, because as long as there are forces of terror willing to wear the executioner’s hood and wield the ax of death indiscriminately, there can be no democracy or freedom.
Instead of attacking President Musharraf for his failures, we should recognize the terrible turmoil that will be unleashed on the world if he loses his grip on power. Pakistan is a nuclear power, and just beneath the surface, it is also a radical Islamic state. Should the radical Islamic element gain control of the nuclear bombs, it is only a matter of time before the powderkeg is lit and war commences.
I was surpised and stunned and devastated by it. The state of Pakistan is hopeless and will never eliminate al quaida and the Taliban. The US must crush them from Afghanistan.
With each passing hour it becomes less likely this will produce a similiar situation to the Duke’s assasination that kicked off World War 1.
That said, Musharaff has a once in a lifetime opportunity to clean out the hornets nest, with the support of the majority of Pakistan’s population.
Here’s hoping he lets loose the dogs, and burns out those giving ‘safe harbor’ to the Taliban and al Qaeda types.
If he doesn’t....he’s as dead politically by summer as Bhutto is dead in reality. The terrorists have a victory in their minds to build upon, after a seven year long string of defeats across the globe.
Just my opinion.
...If Mussy is not dead in reality himself like Bhutto by next summer, since he too has been threaten a few times himself.
Yeah, this is a stretch. Ferdinand's killer was a Serb (ie Christian, Serbian Orthodox).
Fair point, no denying it.
He takes his personal security far more seriously than Bhutto did. Most dictators do, and thats what he is once you strip away the niceties.
Better that than a Islamofacist bent on bringing about Armageddon so a guy can pop out of a well after 1500 years....
-—With each passing hour it becomes less likely this will produce a similiar situation to the Duke’s assasination that kicked off World War 1.-—
It took a month for the major powers to actually go to war and a string of actions without which war might have been diverted. The hours after had little to do with it. We don’t really know which incident might start the chain of events or even what the chain of events might look like. The politicians back then thought they were playing a game which would benefit them, not incinerate there world.
The article's insinuation that Pakistan is at bottom a fundamentalist state on the side of the terrorists, is in fact belied by this action. If they thought they could win an election against a modern secularist woman, they would have had the election and trounced her at the polls and taken power legally, and that would be that.
But they were going to lose.
They do *not* speak for the people of Pakistan. That is *why* they are unwilling to let the people of Pakistan speak.
The dirty little secret of the whole war in that the Islamicist nutjobs have no political base, even in the countries they pretend are their homeland. They are a violent faction, not countries.
They use violence exclusively because without it no one would pay the slightest attention to them or their demands. They are too marginal for anyone to need to do so.
And the right solution to them is emphatically not to write off entire countries in which they have no majority and precious little support, as ungovernable or as their own, merely because they commit acts of violence in those places with any frequency.
Instead they need to be defied politically whatever they do, and everyone in the countries concerned (and in all others, frankly) needs to side with those they attack, and annihilate them. The anger generated by this action, within Pakistan, is political capital in this war. It should be cashed, in full, for dead terrorist bodies.
What the world needs now is not handwringing or cleverness, but full throated bloodthirsty *revenge*. Accurately aimed, to be sure. That is the way to beat these people. All of Pakistan would cheer for it, right now. So unload on the bastards up in Waziristan, sweep ruthlessly for Bin Laden and company, *now*.
The elections should also go ahead, showing the terrorists are powerless to stop them, and showing that they lack any political support or base. Remember blue fingers.
Why not India or China? Does the USA have to do everything?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1945145/posts
“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.”
‘It took a month for the major powers to actually go to war and a string of actions without which war might have been diverted. The hours after had little to do with it’
The world moves at a much faster pace in all aspects today than in it did in 1914.
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