While I was away

While I’ve been away from my desk....the world has continued to be interesting. Of course the big news was Benazir Bhutto’s assassination. I don’t claim to be prophetic, but it startled me when she was killed, the day after the lad and I discussed her chances of survival as being near nil in the midst of Pakistan’s chaotic political atmosphere. Those are the kinds of predictions one would rather not come true.

I don’t have cable television anymore, so I haven’t been able to watch what CNN or MSNBC or FOX has been saying. However, from reading about what other people are watching, I gather there is a lot of hagiography going on. Which doesn’t particularly surprise me.

My view of Benazir Bhutto has never exactly been given over to hagiography. Despite being a fascinating international character, she was a cut-throat politician, too, who loved power and money. And she stepped on a lot of toes and made enemies along the way. She was booted out office twice, robbed her country blind, probably had a role in assassinating her brother who led opposition against her, she and her husband were convicted in absentia (in Geneva) for money laundering, and she was facing corruption charges in Spain and, I think, London, as well. She and her husband used the Pakistani treasury to feather their nest quite richly. Just your average politician, I guess.

There were certainly enough people and groups out there, with long-standing vendettas, to make a list of potential assassins quite long. I doubt we will ever know who killed her, but I assume that blaming al Qaeda is convenient/useful for the moment.

Interesting article about Benazir Bhutto’s role in Pakistani (and US) politics in the London Review of Books, of all places. It seems to hit all the high points of her career, most of which I’ve read or heard in other places over the years. Her recent dealings with Musharraf were not exactly what the US press has portrayed them to be, either. But that’s not surprising. We have a stupid, incurious press.