Before you make up your mind about whether Benazir Bhutto’s assassination is bad for Pakistan, you might want to read this. I was looking around on some blogs and trying to remember why I never thought very much of Ms. Bhutto. Perhaps because I remembered that she was tossed out for corruption. But this op-ed in the LA Times makes her look as bad as Musharraf.
It is widely believed that Ms. Bhutto lost both her governments on grounds of massive corruption. She and her husband, a man who came to be known in Pakistan as “Mr. 10%,” have been accused of stealing more than $1 billion from Pakistan’s treasury. She is appealing a money-laundering conviction by the Swiss courts involving about $11 million. Corruption cases in Britain and Spain are ongoing.
It was particularly unappealing of Ms. Bhutto to ask Musharraf to bypass the courts and drop the many corruption cases that still face her in Pakistan. He agreed, creating the odiously titled National Reconciliation Ordinance in order to do so. Her collaboration with him was so unsubtle that people on the streets are now calling her party, the Pakistan People’s Party, the Pervez People’s Party. Now she might like to distance herself, but it’s too late.
Why did Ms. Bhutto and her party cronies demand that her corruption cases be dropped, but not demand that the cases of activists jailed during the brutal regime of dictator Zia ul-Haq (from 1977 to 1988) not be quashed? What about the sanctity of the law? When her brother Mir Murtaza Bhutto — my father — returned to Pakistan in 1993, he faced 99 cases against him that had been brought by Zia’s military government. The cases all carried the death penalty. Yet even though his sister was serving as prime minister, he did not ask her to drop the cases. He returned, was arrested at the airport and spent the remaining years of his life clearing his name, legally and with confidence, in the courts of Pakistan.
[…] And I am suspicious of her talk of ensuring peace. My father was a member of Parliament and a vocal critic of his sister’s politics. He was killed outside our home in 1996 in a carefully planned police assassination while she was prime minister. There were 70 to 100 policemen at the scene, all the streetlights had been shut off and the roads were cordoned off. Six men were killed with my father. They were shot at point-blank range, suffered multiple bullet wounds and were left to bleed on the streets.
My father was Benazir’s younger brother. To this day, her role in his assassination has never been adequately answered, although the tribunal convened after his death under the leadership of three respected judges concluded that it could not have taken place without approval from a “much higher” political authority.
Read it all. Then read some more about Bhutto before wondering if her assassination is good or bad for Pakistan—and for the U.S.
Update: Here’s another post from the same blog that you should read: Pakistan’s Arafat. Now there’s an epithet.
Same thing happened with Princess Di. *shrug*
All true – however, the alternative that seems like more and more probable – an Islamist coup that will turn the Pakistani army (with the nukes, let’s not forget) in a toy in some Islamofascist’s hand is hardly more palatable.
Yep, hard choice, but necessary.
I don’t think Pakistan can be saved, frankly. Its history is one of Islamic fanaticism. It was created because the Muslims of the Indo-Pakistan region couldn’t get along with the Hindus that lived there. They still don’t.
The big question is, when they launch the Islamic bomb, who will they hit first? India or the U.S.?
Thank you for the link.
As I just noted in a cent post, Benazir Bhutto was Pakistan’s Arafat. no more and no less.
She may have dined with presidents and prime ministers, but in the end, she stole billions from her nation and paid for and supported terror when it served her needs.
Knowing how to use a knife and fork could not change who she was.
They won’t launch one.
They claim the bombs are separate from the launchers.
The Islamic clerics that take over Pakistan eventually will just claim one of the bunkers was pilfered, and a few bombs are missing. They will be trucked into India, and Israel. And set off.
They will give JUST enough warning to stop any counter attacks, and give the terrorists plenty of time to get the bombs in place before the warning.
They’ll get the best of both worlds. They can USE their nukes, and since they claimed they were stolen, the UN will stop any retaliation.
Though I doubt India will care about the UN.
Still not quite the same… Bhutto at least kept the money to herself, instead of funnelling it into increasingly dehumanizing ways to commit acts of terror against Hindus, leading up to a declaration of war against India. At least, as far as we know.
I still can’t see this assassination being good for anyone but Al Qaeda. If Bhutto had died of AIDS like Arafat, her fans would at least make themselves laughing stocks with their outraged insistence that secret Hindu poisons were to blame. Instead, the UN is seriously entertaining all the dark conspiracies they weave about Musharraf’s and Sharif’s involvement, and the Pakistani media is happily doing their best to convince everyone that elections are pointless and everyone should boycott them, except of course those who see it as their Islamic duty to put the most extreme believers into power.
No one earth is quite an angel. If we’re talking corrupt politicians, that is much easier to deal with than Islamic extremists like Al Qaeda and those that likely killed her.
The Lying Arse Times is no friend of Israel.
Why progressives, so hate Hebrews, is a story worthy of an entire web page.
Something to ponder.
Why would the LA Times, be so afraid of a women, standing up to, the women beating, 7th century troglodytes, that infest the Middle East?
jn
Sorry to keep this thread going, but it’s interesting to note all the headlines claiming Pakistani police prevented an autopsy on Bhutto, with a tiny parenthetical note later in the article that they did so on the demands of Bhutto’s husband and family.
It’s the Iranian cultural revolution again. The Bhuttos are complicit in the coverup, hoping to use it against Musharraf. Once again, the Shah will be dragged down by the libertarians and human rights groups, while Ayatollah bin Laden sweeps into victory and promptly eliminates both.
Only this time, a nuclear arsenal will fall right into his hands.