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The Benizar Bhutto Who Done It

One can only make sense of a world turned upside down by standing on one’s head.

The New Year presents us with at least one important “Who done it?” Who assassinated Benizar Bhutto and why?

The historic stage is littered with potential culprits. Immediately after Bhutto’s assassination, the administration of Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, released a tape purporting to be a conversation between people involved in the hit and a person who ordered the hit.

“We terminated the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat mujahideen.” These were the words of al-Qaeda’s top commander for Afghanistan operations and spokesperson Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, immediately after the attack that claimed the life of Pakistani politician Benazir Bhutto on Thursday (December 27), Asia Times on line reported.

President George Bush had engaged both Musharraf and Bhutto diplomatically in an effort to turn Pakistan in a democratic direction. That diplomatic effort appeared to be succeeding, and then the bomb went off. The scene of the assassination was soon scrubbed clean by water hoses, eliminating all useful forensic evidence that might have been gathered to resolve the question “Who assassinated Bhutto?”

The Musharraf regime, assuming it had no hand in the assassination, certainly would have benefited from an earlier forensic examination of scene of the earlier attempt on Bhutto’s life. Bhutto herself said as much in an interview with David Frost.

At this point, though it is very early on, we are left with the question “qui bono?” who benefits, as a speculative guide.

The Bush administration – and diplomatic efforts in general – certainly did not benefit from Bhutto’s assassination. Temporarily, the jihadists appear to have gained the most from the chaos caused by the assassination. The culprits fingered by Musharraf and to a certain extent by Bhutto herself, the Afghan jihadists, have “distanced themselves,” in American political parlance, from the assassination.

But the really interesting thing about the jihadists -- potential makers and breakers of US congresspersons and presidential wannabes -- is that they fail most spectacularly when they succeed. That is what happened in Anbar province. They took it over, banned smoking, imposed hated Sharia law and forced popular sheiks to give up their daughters in marriage to the jihadists. Almost immediately, the locals began to turn them in to American soldiers. The assassination of Benizar Bhutto may, in the long run, prove to be one of these successful spectacular failures, assuming Americans have the patience and the fortitude to run the race through. Europe, always short of breath in the crunch, is traitorous in this regard.

Comments

mccommas said…
I hope you are right in that.
Don Pesci said…
Me too. But in the Middle East, here are no certainties -- only likely probabilities. Saudi Arabia has been thoroughly corrupted by the swift acceleration of wealth and power; it is ripe for plucking, and the jihadists know it. In Iraq, in provinces once controlled by jihadists, the locals have turned against them, a good sign. Afternoons spent with the jihadists at tea and torture have convinced even Saddam Hussein’s boon companions to co-operate with the national police, always a corrupt force. The badlands of Afghanistan are controlled by tribal chieftains who, perhaps fortunately, do not read the New York Times. Here at home, people like Chris Dodd have convinced gullible movers and shakers that we ought to withdraw from Iraq – precisely at a point when withdrawal would be madness – and concentrate our military forces in Afghanistan, leaving the jihadists to regroup in Iraq. Absolute crap.

So the correlation of forces just now tells against us. If the Dodd people have their way, we will be revisiting the whole mess under – who knows – a Clinton administration; which is to say, the jihadists will be permitted to reign free throughout the Middle East, with predictable results.
mccommas said…
One thought -- have you noticed how conspicuously lucky the United States has been her whole life?

This kind of crisis just does not seem to happen here.

For example Flight 93 did not make it to the Capital. That was the one target that day that had to be stopped at all costs.

And it was.

I think we are Someone's favorite country. The right people were aboard that plane that day to stop it. -- The "Lets Roll" people.

I sometimes wonder if 9-11 was allowed to happen in order to warn us of something far worst that would happen if we did not act.

I wonder if we have squandered that warning or if what we have done is enough.

Then I turn on the TV and read the blogs and fear the willfully blind fools as much as I do the terrorists.

They at times seem to be on the same side. What would have happened if they were on Flight 93 that day?
Don Pesci said…
God loves America.
mccommas said…
There is no other explanation.

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