Bhutto, a follow up.

My heart sang when I saw Tom had written about the assasination of Pakistan's Benazir Bhutto.

Suffice to say I see enough substantive discussion amongst people I hang out with over things that aren't remotely as important, the fact that someone was inspired to put fingers to keyboard for this makes me excited.


There is already some discussion on the fact that the police did not request an autopsy of how she died, which could mean a number of things, most of them nebulous and worrisome for Pakistan, women who want political capital in the Middle East and the War on Terror the United States is having.


The debate (how quickly it begins, and how rapidly the New York Times goes into detail about it is astonishing) centers around two actors. One is a security detail (lapsed, we are assured) provided to Bhutto by General Musharraf, and the suicide bomber from an unknown actor (Al-Qeada is presumed).


This does not help General Musharraf, as his government has been on the safe end of a crackdown of rights in the country, and has much to gain from a gagged Bhutto. Most damning of all is that an autopsy was not requested, and might not ever be released. This is important, because it leaves a lot of evidence up in the air. Were the bullets she was shot with from guns that the security detail would use? Of what make were the bullets and do they corrolate to what the Pakistani armed forces use?


According to the New York Times, Bhutto was shot in the head or neck as she was waving to the crowd of supporters from an open sunroof and moments aferwards a suicide bomber attacked a car in her motorcade, killing 20 and injuring 50.


What it boils down to, is was the Pakistani government compliant with suicide bombings, Ie, was this a state job? I doubt it for the following reasons. (It goes without saying I am not an expert.)

1) Pakistan is already under incredible scrutiny from the West. It has little to gain from an assasination of the opposition leader. There is already an assumption that the government there is not on the up and up, so to speak, and so if something goes wrong, the first people you'd look at are the General and his thugs. I suspect the General would prefer to have less media attention on his back and the assassination of Bhutto does not achieve that.


2) Al-Qaeda is an organization which grows and learns from previous terror attacks. A sniper, while not the usual m.o. of the organization, is something which is not out of the realm of possibility, one assumes Al-Qeada not to use conventional forms of assassination, and thus the group might use it. Al-Qaeda could also have colluded with other terror organizations that are less reliant on suicide bombings as a strategy, but that seems less unlikely. Perhaps a collusion with another state actor.


3) Usually, when popular political figures are assassinated, riots occur. I suspect General Musharraf wants a riot like he wants a second rectum.


4) Al-Qeada has already taken credit for the attack, they don't get along with Pakistan, and Bhutto's homecoming parade was crashed twice by Al-Qeada suicide bombers, leaving 150 of her supporters dead.

As interesting and important as all of this is, we can sort out later who did it, though. What remains most important in all of this is that a woman of tremendous resolve and backbone was murdered to make a point. Let us hope the country comes together and condemns this attack universally. The good die young. It is my hope that she's with Gandhi now.

She's missed.

Hateful Screed; Politics Edition!

Benazir Bhutto has been killed. It is a sad day. The primary impact is always one of loss - here was a person who let us understand the movement she represented, who was willing to die for it. That kind of political devotion is unheard of in America, which brings me to point two of why the day is sad - our own political race, and how the candidates are going to try to use the death of this noble person in order to further their own careers. If they mention it at all, that is. I understand most of the republicans have something against People Who Are Not White, and want to hide them all behind fences.

I once recall hearing that although you are white and American, it does not mean you don't suffer - just that your suffering pales in comparison with what other people have to go through. Which is true. There's been a push with recent American policy to appeal to use what sounds like the logic of the suburbs internationally - the fence metaphor returns. If you don't like your neighbors, block them off. Don't do anything to upset your important neighbors, too - the US can't come down too hard on president Musharef, because if they did, where would the US stage it's forays into the middle east? How many people even know or care about what's happening?

Before I am swept away by the tidal pull of despair, I must try to come clean about some things. I am cynical because deep down, I feel that I'm helpless in the situation. I'm not even sure that if I knew how I could help that I would. At my core, I hate politics, and all that they stand for. I think that they're nothing but an outlet for the most vile, bullying, putrescent pieces of semi-sentient human waste to achieve something resembling, in it's most exterior aspects, a respectable life. I even hate the candidates I like. There's nothing admirable about public office. It's a circus of balding old men and their sycophants, mistresses, and saducees.

And the worst part seems to be that, like a disease, it's spreading. Ted Haggart, Larry E. Craig, Rush Limbaugh. People who abuse the faith that the public has in them, who lead tiny, pathetic shadow-lives behind the public image that constitutes all that they really are. Say what you like about Marion Barry, at least DC knew what it was getting when they re-elected him.

Why do these drug addicted whoremongers get to continue with their unusually wide-stanced ways, whenever someone so generally admirable as Benazir Bhutto gets blown up? The American Political/Fame system seems to be irreversibly corrupt, where one achieves power through falsehood, lowest-common-denominator appeals, and apparently, the guiding hand of Satan himself. The person who stands up is the person who gets cut down. I hate to sound like them, I hate the thought that this post even echoes something that they might suggest, but perhaps ignoring the problem will no longer make it go away. The American Way, anymore, is about access, and as long as you have an iPod, radio, satellite radio, TiVo, elaborate smoke message system, or effing telegraph, these people are going to be worming their way into your life. We're like Whatsisbucket in A Clockwork Orange, tied to a chair, and forced to witness not atrocities and horrors, but rather, the overwhelming cowardice, lies, and pabulum of the modern age. Is it any surprise, then, when America produces not monsters, but yawning, gawking sociopaths, unable to feel anything other than greed?

I, too, am a victim. I strive for something resembling legitimacy, morality, respectability. Would I even be able to recognize it, if it would present itself? Probably not. I am one of the yawners, the gawkers, the ones who casually shrug off increasingly depressing systems of jurisprudence in favor of talking about who should have "won" Tila Tequila's show. I may be suffering, but it does not mean that I have any idea to what degree others are in pain. I can only hope to take some lesson away from the assassination, some aspect of Benazir Bhutto's work, that maybe there are worse things that can happen to you besides death - you can live a life of complete mundanity, dulling your senses from a universe full of wonders.