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| India-Pakistan | |
| Benazir Bhutto: Killed by the real Pakistan | |
| 2007-12-27 | |
A recent CNN poll showed that 46 percent of Pakistanis approve of Osama bin Laden. Aspirants to the American presidency should hope to score so highly in the United States. In Pakistan, though, the al-Qaeda emir easily beat out that country’s current president, Pervez Musharraf, who polled at 38 percent. President George Bush, the face of a campaign to bring democracy — or, at least, some form of sharia-lite that might pass for democracy — to the Islamic world, registered nine percent. Nine! If you want to know what to make of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto’s murder today in Pakistan, ponder that. There is the Pakistan of our fantasy. The burgeoning democracy in whose vanguard are judges and lawyers and human rights activists using the “rule of law” as a cudgel to bring down a military junta. In the fantasy, Bhutto, an attractive, American-educated socialist whose prominent family made common cause with Soviets and whose tenures were rife with corruption, was somehow the second coming of James Madison. Then there is the real Pakistan: an enemy of the United States and the West. | |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #3 Need to re-work the Rantburg-futures thing. |
| Posted by: Thomas Woof 2007-12-27 17:36 |
| #2 There is the Pakistan of our fantasy. Ummmmmm...nope. Not mine I'm surprised she lasted as long as she did. |
| Posted by: tu3031 2007-12-27 15:36 |
| #1 An excellent, excellent piece. I think you could extend his analysis to a heck of a lot of other Muslim countries. You can rag on the rulers all you want, but the fact is that the populations of Muslim countries aren't goose-stepping to the tune of Der Führer of the moment, they're goose-stepping to the tune of Muhammad, who started it all 1300 years ago. And they will take down any ruler who contradicts Muhammad. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2007-12-27 15:31 |