More photos here: Link
Posted on 12/28/2007 9:20:14 AM PST by Abathar
FOR the next several days, you're going to read and hear a great deal of pious nonsense in the wake of the assassination of Pakistan's former prime minister, Benazir. Her country's better off without her. She may serve Pakistan better after her death than she did in life.
We need have no sympathy with her Islamist assassin and the extremists behind him to recognize that Bhutto was corrupt, divisive, dishonest and utterly devoid of genuine concern for her country.
She was a splendid con, persuading otherwise cynical Western politicians and "hardheaded" journalists that she was not only a brave woman crusading in the Islamic wilderness, but also a thoroughbred democrat.
In fact, Bhutto was a frivolously wealthy feudal landlord amid bleak poverty. The scion of a thieving political dynasty, she was always more concerned with power than with the wellbeing of the average Pakistani. Her program remained one of old-school patronage, not increased productivity or social decency.
Educated in expensive Western schools, she permitted Pakistan's feeble education system to rot - opening the door to Islamists and their religious schools.
During her years as prime minister, Pakistan went backward, not forward. Her husband looted shamelessly and ended up fleeing the country, pursued by the courts. The Islamist threat - which she artfully played both ways - spread like cancer.
But she always knew how to work Westerners - unlike the hapless Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who sought the best for his tormented country but never knew how to package himself.
Military regimes are never appealing to Western sensibilities. Yet, there are desperate hours when they provide the only, slim hope for a country nearing collapse. Democracy is certainly preferable - but, unfortunately, it's not always immediately possible. Like spoiled children, we have to have it now - and damn the consequences.
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So: an Islamist assassin kills a corrupt Socialist politician in Pakistan. I’m supposed to choose sides? Ho hum. As the punchline to the joke goes “I’ll have a diet coke”
Benazir Bhutto carried a lot of baggage.
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I wonder what she did to piss off the Clintons.
An American equivalent would be the Kennedy clan................
Please tell us the joke
mansoor ijaz said much the same also.
More photos here: Link
Stop shooting. She’s already dead, Jim.
she was so much of a crook and feudal tyrant, she didn’t have a chance right?.... She would have had some votes, because a lot of those people rode on her coat tails. The rest of the population don’t care because they EXPECT their leaders to be corrupt. Different values, different mid sets.
It would have been foolish for our government leaders to not have considered what Bhutto’s return to Pakistan and her eventual assassination would do to the region. I can’t think that the powers that be did not consider it. To me, Bhutto’s assassination was like a “given” in a geometry problem. It was bound to happen. When was the question.
Even if she had lived long enough to win the election, she was obviously not smart enough to keep from harm’s way and probably would not have lived much longer anyways.
Peters knows his stuff for sure. I can’t believe how crazy the people in Pak are acting. Guess, they needed someone to worship. They will be better off without her.
The PPP is part of the Socialist International.
Well, Hitlery did say that "Benazir Bhutto was my friend."
Another friend of the Klintoons who turns up dead.
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