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.
Yeah, this is a stretch. Ferdinand's killer was a Serb (ie Christian, Serbian Orthodox).
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.