It’s tragic that Benazir Bhutto was assassinated today. There is rampant speculation about who did it and why. But largely missing from the analyses I’ve read is the possibility that the nation of Pakistan, the Islamic nation of Pakistan, a nation that recently gave Osama bin Laden a 46% approval rating, simply didn’t want a high-born, Western-educated, secularist woman in a position of power in their country. A woman who has twice been removed from office on corruption charges and whose father was branded an enemy of Islam and executed in 1979.
We can pretend that it’s an oppressive regime we oppose and that the Pakistani people are longing for freedom and equality as we’ve defined it. In actuality, our quarrel is with the Pakistanis themselves, at least half of whom would institutionalize Islamic fundamentalism and call it freedom. Pakistanis who would love to be free of Western influence, be it cultural or political. Pakistanis who want to practice their religion and define their values without interference from outsiders.
The world does not want our electronics, nor our cars, nor much of anything we have to offer. Why do we insist that the world want our democracy? Clearly it doesn’t.
Half of Pakistan does not want to be under nutty Islamic Right Wingers’ control, Marie. They want a government free of US control (and corrupt US puppets like Musharraf), but that is not the same thing as the other at all.
It is a sure sign of desperation that anybody in Pakistan rallied at all around another US puppet, like Benazir Bhutto most certainly was. The question now is???? How many in Pakistan believe that it was Musharraf that actually murdered her? And how many don’t? At any rate, the Pakistan people must truly hate the US government at this point, for taking a bad situation in their country, and making it far worst. That understanding and feeling they now share in common with Iraqis.