It feels odd to post a post saying “I have nothing to say”, especially when that basically repeats what Amanda just said, but I just wanted to second the “I have nothing to say” by saying something.
I don’t know whether al Qaeda is responsible for the brutal assassination of Benazir Bhutto. I certainly have never heard of a suicide bomber first shooting the intended victim, but then I haven’t heard much about most suicide bomb attacks, so I’ll leave real analysis of the whole thing tothe more informed.
Even assuming Musharraf’s people had nothing to do with this murder, it’s an interesting coincidence (in the sense of “coinciding”) that Bhutto’s party was supremely concerned that Musharraf would find a way to delay the election - and that the aforementioned ally of the United States is now considering just that. His final decision, and the US’ reaction to that decision, will be very telling.
23 Responses to “Cui bono, Cui culpa”
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Al Qaeda has used suicide bombings as a means of assasination before. It strikes me as more likely that they would open fire first and use the suicide bomb as a clean-up than the idea of Musharef’s people embracing suicide-bombing as an assasination method.
There’s a report of al Qaeda claiming responsibility. By eliminating the non-Islamic fundamentalist/non-military dictator candidate, they keep the status quo as is. A status quo which has been enormously beneficial to them.
Sorry to sound too paranoid, but does it have to be one or the other?
It isn’t as if Pakistan’s military and intelligence folk don’t have a history of playing footsy with Islamic extremists …
I have to wonder how much of it was her politics and how much of it was her gender alone?
From what I understand, the Taliban is basically a creation of the Pakistani ISI, but there’s a huge power struggle between the Islamic Fundamentalists and Musharef’s people, so there might not be much crossover between the two.
Bhutto may have represented a way for less radical segments to keep power in a less heavyhanded and dictatorial manner which would hurt al Qaeda more than Musharef’s people.
Re: the gender question
::eyeroll:: I think the assassinations of her father and husband + others pretty much puts the gender vs politics question in the shade.
make that ::big eyeroll::. But hey, if that’s the only note on your horn, knock yerself out.
You’d think political leaders in that region would learn better crowd control…
Wow, Eric, you get the asshole of the day award. Must be rough being a man and all and not having to worry about gender.
I doubt gender was an issue in the assassination decision, but it’s certainly a huge loss to lose a powerful female leader during an era of backlash against women all over the world.
Everyone’s missing the biggest “coincidence” (or not) of all–there was an unsuccessful attempt on the life of the other opposition leader, Nawaz al-Sharif just hours before Bhutto was assassinated.
Coincidence? Maybe, but it sure looks fishy.
If her sex was not the determining factor, it sure as hell contributes to the satisfaction people who wanted her dead are feeling right about now. I will bet on that.
It won’t be the first attempt. Bhutto may have posed a small threat to Al Qaeda, but it’s not like they had reason to fear her that much: Musharref hasn’t exactly been energetically seeking AQ memebers.
She knew she was going to die. I’ve already had a conservative acquaintance dismiss her ‘martyrdom complex’ as if she wasn’t ’speaking out’ heroically against incredible odds. I suppose being a coward is reasonable to people like that.
re: Gender
Several months ago, I brought the September issue of National Geographics, and it had an article on Pakistan by Don Belt;
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0709/pakistan/pakistan.html
…and there was a picture of a billboard, where the actress’s face has been blackened out by someone who saw the display of it as sinful.
Who knew Jerry Falwell travelled that far?
“I certainly have never heard of a suicide bomber first shooting the intended victim, ”
It makes sense if your primary objective is to assassinate someone and your secondary objective is to bomb the hell out of their supporters or make doubly sure that you got them while not being taken alive. I imagine most high-profile suicide attacks have a fairly variable set of motives, means, and available opportunities.
I know there’s no way to be sure, but … even if Musharraf’s government wasn’t complicit in the assassination, they sure as hell didn’t do much to prevent it.
This is the first big news story of 2008 - and may turn out to one of the most important. I feel like someone’s personally attacked me, like I’m injured. How dare they do this.
“If her sex was not the determining factor, it sure as hell contributes to the satisfaction people who wanted her dead are feeling right about now. I will bet on that. ”
&
“…and there was a picture of a billboard, where the actress’s face has been blackened out by someone who saw the display of it as sinful.”
But if you link the two, Shazam!,youre a racist.
Of course the people responsible for the grafitti are stroking massive boners over the assassination,tonight. You can bet the farm on it.
Western feminists were calling attention to misogyny issues in that part of the world long before conservatives decided to bomb the shit out of it.
Western feminists were calling attention to misogyny issues in that part of the world long before conservatives decided to bomb the shit out of it.
Western feminists were calling attention to misogyny issues in that part of the world long before conservatives decided to bomb the shit out of it.
Western feminists were calling attention to misogyny issues in that part of the world long before conservatives decided to bomb the shit out of it.
Maybe if I say it again and again, it’ll sink in.
edited to add: I specified “western” feminists because that’s who pussy tourmaline was attempting to attack, above. It wasn’t intended as some sort of backhanded imperialism.
re: pussy tourmaline
Why can’t men like him just dress up as women and quietly wank off instead of harassing feminist blogs?
…and, big example of Western Feminist on the issue: Margaret Atwood, a big name Canadian writer whose 1985 Handmaid’s Tale was partly inspired by the Regan era, partly inspired by Iranian fundamentalist Islam.
I recommend everyone to read it, it’s so complex. The book is full of people who collaborate to survive, who collaborate because they are opportunists. People who fought to the end, gave up. People who tolerated the oppression of their spouses until the water for the both of them is boiling (Offred’s husband only try to escape with his family when the law would have taken them away from him.), and countries who continue to do business with US (Japan) or hush internal dissent against them for fear of their military(Canada).
There was a piece in the Washington Times today suggesting that Bhutto had been “placed” back in Pakistan by the U.S. - Condi apparantly calling herself to “ask” Bhutto to return to Pakistan to serve as a way of stabilizing the country, and offering balance to the radical political scene.
Yet again it appears the current administration and their “intelligence” community made the wrong decision. Once again there is blood on Shrub’s hands.
Another report (from the Huffington Post yesterday) reported there as an email sent to the media from a representative of Bhutto’s in October. Supposedly she (Bhutto) wanted to make a public statement saying that if anything happened to her, Musharref should be blamed. Don’t know if there’s any truth to any of this. Perhaps it’s too early to tell exactly what happened, but I certainly smell a rat.
Bhutto had always wanted to return to seize power. The military didn’t want her back because in her earlier incarnation as PM, she was a thief, like all the other Pakistani politicians.
The Army has its own issues, especially given the fact that it has a state within a state, the ISI that answers to no one. However, in general, the Pakistani Officer Corps has been the most progressive and forward looking segment of the leadership class.
Benazir needed an ally to get her home. She had been quietly lobbying people in Washington and London to help her out. Condi simply was the person who saw the Benazir could lend some legitimacy to a Musharaff transitional regime as the General left the Army. The criticism that is being made here is both misplaced and stupid. Benazir was going home come hell or high water to try to sieze power from the Army, who killed her father.
Although Benazir had cleaned up her act, the charges of corruption never quite left her. She always understood that her death was a distinct possibility. Now she has passed into history.
More than likely, elements of the ISI who were friendly to AQ and the Talib made common cause to do her in.
I have to wonder what your definition of “progressive” and “forward-looking” might be.
The US establishment–press corps and media in general; State Dept; other foreign policy bureacrats, so-called “mainstream” or “centrist” foreign policy wonks, etc–define it, de facto, as “cooperative with US policy and interests at the moment.” Witness the fact that the vast majority of the various foreign boogeymen we’ve been instructed to dread to the point of overlooking or even approving various war crimes and crimes against humanity we commit, since the collapse of the USSR at any rate, have been proteges of US foreign policy, often until just minutes before a President named Bush suddenly declares them enemies of all humankind.
We helped Qaddaffi come to power in Libya, then suddenly he was Public Enemy #1 in the mid-Reagan years, except when that was leftist regimes or insurgencies in Central America or the Evil Empire. We helped Saddam Hussein come to power in Iraq. Bush Sr evidently hoped to buy his “I’m not a wimp!” spurs with a cheap, easy little misadventure in Panama (not so cheap for the Panamanian dead of course) to hunt down the wicked, evil Noreiga–who had come to power in extremely suspicious circumstances with the assassination of Trujillo, again with clear US support.
Everything I’ve ever heard about the Pakistani officer corps fits that classic pattern to a T. Noam Chomsky pointed out how it works over 40 years ago–
Our establishment wants more influence in Country X, but more or less popular leaders in Country X (which, generally being Third World former colonial regimes, suffer severe structural issues from maldevelopment and retained elitism on one hand, hence at least the plausible appearance of corruption) tend to want to at least look not totally subservient to the superpower, so they waver between being embarrasing and possible active allies of our superpower rivals–and above all, they tend, in their desire to maintain some popularity, to limit their country’s compliance with the wishes of transnational corporations to buy labor cheap and sell products dear.
Solution: drum up the more or less nebulous threat of military conquest by neighbors and/or alleged Soviet/Chinese backed subversion from within and offer generously to fill this “need” with massive military/paramilitary (police, esp. secret police) “aid.” If the leadership in Country X gainsays the US policy establishment’s judgment that they are facing an imminent threat from without or within, we brand their leaders fellow-travelers with that same enemy (as for instance, Iran’s Mossadeq was either a secret Soviet agent, or naive and unstable and therefore easy prey for Soviet masterminds, as Americans were led to believe in the mid-50s and ever after in encyclopedias and the like.)
Assuming the leadership plays along for the sake of avoiding this fate and hence targeting for extreme prejudice, and perhaps is tempted by all the military/police state goodies we offer, we then take credit for being generous by pointing to how much we are donating, and if someone points out that perhaps these countries don’t need advanced fighter jets or the latest training in surveillance and interrogation techniques, claim that they sure do, that the Russians/Chinese/Cubans are coming, and so this counts since they’d otherwise have to finance all this repressive machinery with taxes. But obviously if this isn’t true then our “aid” is at best irrelevant. But it’s much worse than that.
Eventually, after some years of this kind of thing, we have a military/police sector that is essentially funded by Uncle Sam, and predictably enough some of this “enlightened” new officer corps will be loyal to their foreign paymasters. It helps that we go around dubbing them “sophisticated,” “pragmatic,” “savvy,” and “progressive” and “forward-looking;” after all, they have access to resources their non-militarized compatriots do not–Western pocketbooks.
At this point, the old, authentically indiginous and more or less populist leadership can either listen to the progressive, forward-looking, pro-corporate, hence “pro-Western” advice of their nominal military/police subordinates, or face a well-funded, organized coup that will win instant recognition from Western regimes–at any rate, from the USA, with Israel along for the ride if the British can’t be persuaded to support this new lot.
In many variants, the pattern has been repeated again, again, and again–sometimes involving a coup/foreign invasion as in Guatemala and Iran in 1954, or Indonesia in 1965.
No matter how barbaric the new military police states may be, they remain “progressive” and “forward-looking” in our official and quasi-official jargon, until for some reason or other they become inconvenient–at which point quite suddenly all their years or decades of brutality pop up in our press as though it were all breaking news, when in fact critics of Western policy may have been decrying them for years or decades or generations. Nor do we ever acknowledge that these suddenly discovered enemies of humanity owed their years in power to our own support. Not officially anyway–but if you read books by or interviews with the power brokers, sometimes they are candid. Colin Powell, for instance, quite unofficially acknolwedged that he was personally involved in handling Noreiga in Panama, saying “sometimes you have to deal with despicable people.” He didn’t explain what worse alternative Noreiga’s regime was supposed to be heading off.
So now we have Pakistan, a country whose military regime has been at the very least pretending to the mantle of Islamic fundamentalism for the past quarter-century or more. A regime which, while nominally our ally, has given safe refuge to the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and bin Laden himself–indeed, the Taliban was largely imposed on Afghanistan as a projection of Pakistani power, quietly sanctioned by us as an alternative to among other things possible Iranian influence (and it was the Iranians who cooperated with us in overthrowing the Taliban in 2002, because they always hated the Taliban).
Then again, al-Qaeda was largely a repackaging of the forces we ourselves helped raise up, and Saudi funding and other direct supports (including the person of Osama bin Laden) with US blessing built up in Afghanistan and all over the Sunni Muslim world, to combat leftism in general and the USSR in particular. So it is not too surprising that the current gang of thugs running Pakistan is quite comfortable with al-Qaeda and Taliban running around on their soil.
What we should be thinking about more clearly is how serious are our foriegn policy elites about opposing any of this, insofar as understandings might be reached about transnational economics, under whatever label, and to hell with the rights of women, religious minorities, democracy, basic civil rights, etc.
I don’t know about Bhutto’s personal morals regarding government and frankly I wouldn’t care if some graft had stuck to her fingers–if she had been capable in fact of running an overall less vicious regime more in the interests of ordinary Pakistanis and less in the interest of the US foreign policy elite.
Your post, section9, is just another in a long series of double standards–anyone considered “leftist” is held to the highest standards, anyone on the right is forgiven the most atrocious sins on the grounds that “maybe they mean well” and “anyway we couldn’t do better.”
I haven’t read every link posted here, but what do all of you think about the November interview that just came out where Bhutto allegedly claimed that Bin Laden was killed by Omar Sheikh?