The return of exiled Pakistani politician Benazir Bhutto was an occasion for those who have vowed submission to the will of a compassionate and merciful deity to celebrate by snuffing out the lives of over 130 of their co-religionists and maiming several hundred others:
The death toll rose to 134 killed and 450 wounded Friday following explosions just feet from a truck carrying the returning opposition leader Benazir Bhutto on Thursday night, in what regional authorities and Bhutto said was a suicide attack by Islamist militants.
Bhutto had retreated inside the armored truck a few minutes before the attack and was unhurt, but scores of people were killed among the huge crowds of perhaps 200,000 or more. It was a bloody end to the triumphal tenor of her homecoming after eight years in exile. She was returning to lead her party in the parliamentary elections scheduled for January.
Wretched butchery and terrible news for everyone involved of course, but there’s this: These are not the acts of those confident in the attractiveness of their message in the marketplace of ideas. These are desperate men.
Secular and civil elements in Pakistan – a crucial, even if irregular ally in the war on terror – are agitating for a return to democratic normality and an end to Pervez Musharraf’s military rule. Bhutto’s return to Pakistan marks the beginning of a power-sharing arrangement that should lead in time to just that sort of normalization. The Islamist militants have clearly weighed the odds and decided that there is more to be gained in the indiscriminate slaughter of their own countrymen than trusting to the ballot box. That may stiffen the spines of those already on side, but it cannot be expected to draw them many new sympathizers from among the population at large. And if the Islamist radicals cannot win at the ballot box, then we have little reason to coddle dictators against our conscience.
Benazir Bhutto is an unlikely savior – as a twice-elected president she governed inexpertly and charges of corruption swirled about her person and her entourage. But Pakistan is not Kansas, and this is perhaps the best that we can hope for – that, and for her continued survival, by the grace of God.
Boy, what a mess…
Jim C
Bhutto Charges Mililtary Link In Her Attempted Assassination Bombing…
Former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has now openly said in reference to the suicide bombing and attempted assassination of her what many have more quietly suggested over the years:
She has now openly pointed a finger at some elements within P…
IIRC, her people immediately identified the ISI as the source of the bombing. The ISI, is a) Pakistan’s real government, and b) the very agency who did the most to build and fund the Taliban and other Sunni paramilitary forces. If the question is (and it always is) cui bono, Musharaf is the winner no matter who ultimately whacks her.
One may have had justifiable illusions about bringing democracy to the charnel house known as Iraq, but Pakistan has long been clearly identified as an insane asylum. Who is more unhinged, its inmates or those who would wish to bring democracy (aka mob rule) to the asylum?
re: Who is more unhinged, its inmates or those who would wish to bring democracy (aka mob rule) to the asylum?
Well, I guess that’d be me. But remember, I’m also the one who insists that even a bad result at least has the virtue of disambiguating the threat. Our “Good” tyrants hide behind skirts of that same perpetually outraged street whose radicalism is fanned by state-controlled media. “Love to do something about democratizing you know, but look what we’ve got to work with.” *shrug*
In this perverse symbiosis, the radicals – who claim to favor justice over freedom – point to our insincerity in tolerating their tyrants as a reason to reject a message of freedom, democracy and civil compromise.
Elections have consequences: Grow up or blow up. I’m not afraid of that fight. I’m just tired of playing bullsh!t games.
I understand your point that if the inmates elect someone of their own ilk, then so be it, we have moral clarity on our side, etc usw. And you’re right, the thoroughly corrupt leadership of all these persian carpet countries does provide the angry muj another card in their deck of IO cards that he can play to a receptive audience. But harsh reality is this–they get a little religion first, and then they take on their shirk leadership, and not the other way around. I’ve never encountered a single debrief of any muj, anywhere, who started out by revolting first, getting religion second. So from a practical standpoint, how corrupt their leadership is really doesn’t matter.
Should we be their defenders? Screw that. You have heard me repeatedly propose possible strategies to put the screws on, from Pakistan to Syria, to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (never leave out that Kingdom part, that’s IO at work). But we should be blunt–the only reason we put up with that SOB Musharraf is because the rest of the options can’t be trusted with a used match, much less a small stable of nukes. There’s no reason in the world the USG couldn’t say that openly and honestly, if it had a clue what it was dealing with. And if “disambiguating” means the inmates get control of the nukes, or get to claim some moral high ground in the ensuing civil war because they were “elected” while some sober (we can only hope) element of the military attempts to protect the nukes, well, then I’m agin it.
So let’s talk a little about the faith and its defenders. Christianity rose as the faith of slaves in the Roman Empire because it offered an oppressed people something to be happy about – a community based on love and charity, and a better life in the hereafter. Their example was Christ’s personal sacrifice – a redemption freely offered. Now, the church has had its share of people who’ve abused that sacrifice to their own gain but you can’t lay that on anything in the Gospel. Dont judge Christ by his Christians. The reason so many Westerners have fled the faith in the last century is because our political and economic systems have made it possible to have your heaven right here on earth.
Mohammed didn’t die for his people, he conquered for them. Killed for them. Enslaved others for them. The muj pick and choose elements from the Prophet’s testimony that enable the powerless to feel powerful, even righteous when they slaughter God’s enemies, seize their lands and enslave their children.
The key word is “powerless,” and the dictatorships are what reinforce that sense of temporal futility. And while the kid down the street gets cheerfully sent to his death by the bin Ladens and al Zwahiris of this world, those worthies are notoriously thrifty with the lives of their own children. Because they’re not really pursuing the will of Allah so much as exploiting it for personal political gain.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Lex, I’ve tried to post in reply, but the html is bouncing all over the page. Don’t know what’s wrong, but I can’t type and reply, can’t even see your last reply when I start typing.
I don’t disagree with your precepts, but the conclusions you draw from them are flawed. The dispossessed in Islam don’t associate their piss-poor condition with either Islam (as the source of it) or the current tyrant of their piss-poor regime. Because of the complete asphyxiation of rational thought that Islam accomplishes in the mind of its slaves, they (in aggregate) simply can not make that association. To the extent that they despise their tyrants, it is because they are insufficiently Islamic—their very definition and understanding of corruption is different than ours. Islam already provides the scapegoats in the form of the Jews and the mushrikun, that is, we infidels. The result is that when dispossessed Muslims actually perceive the chains they bear, their unchanging and unchangeable Koran and its acolytes stand ready to tell them why they are not superior: because they have been insufficiently Muslim, and so Allah has punished them by making them inferior to us.
This has certain natural consequences. First, the muj (who contrary to assertion are not/NOT cherry picking from the Koran and the Hadith) can preach to a waiting and receptive audience that it is their duty as Muslims to pick up the sword and follow the example of Muhammad and strike at the necks of the infidels. The tyrants just serve as further proof of the ummah’s failure to follow the example of the Prophet, as they are a scourge upon the faithless.
You, as a privileged member of an English-speaking democratic republic, one that has lasted a truly miraculous two-hundred plus years, almost instinctively feel that if only these dispossessed had some form of electoral power, they wouldn’t feel so dispossessed, so willing to pick up an AK or exploding vest, and would set to the slow, painful, centuries-long process of reforming their regimes and religion. But since elections themselves, the concept of a sacred individual expressing an inalienable right to choose his own government, is not only foreign to Islam, but haram (the human will, flawed and evil, can never be allowed to supplant the immutable will of Allah, aka Sharia, as countless fatwas have demonstrated), pushing democracy on an Islamic regime will result only in unintended consequences, most of which involve tremendous amounts of bloodshed and destruction. Should it pit our enemies against each other, so much the better, but when it gives our enemies the means of the state to carry on that which they would otherwise have to carry on via “terrorism,” then it is a fatally flawed strategy.
Which brings us back to Pakistan. No matter who is elected, they will be corrupt, and they will be hated by a huge segment of Pakistan’s woe-ridden populace (remember, to be popular in Pakistan means to be aggressively pro-Sharia, which also means anti-infidel). So it doesn’t matter how it makes us feel, whether their devils are elected or self-appointed. What matters is what actually serves the best interests of the USA, which is the last, best hope of human liberty (those of us who remember the real neo-conservatives, the mugged liberals of the early 1980s, remember their key belief that the USA is the greatest force for good in the world, and that it follows that what is good for the USA, is almost synonymous with what is good for the rest of the world). Forcing a psuedo-democracy on Pakistan simply does not serve the best interests of the USA, our allies, India. Really, it’s hard to think of anyone it actually serves, save the mob leader who wins power from the electoral fray and ensuing civil wars.
To our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong!