by George Dienhart
In the past 24 hours, many words have been used to describe Benazir Bhutto. Martyr. Politician. Pakistan’s last hope of democracy. For Americans, the most important description is “Major loss in the Global War on Terror”.
Ms. Bhutto was a moderate of great influence in a nation that is now wildly spinning toward Islamic fundamentalism. The loss is regrettable, as is all lost human life. It also sharply illustrates the differences between politics in the United States and Pakistan. Our Presidential aspirants are always greeting people out in the open. They shake hands, slap backs and generally kiss the ass of anyone willing to have their ass kissed. It is a time-honored tradition that works. People like to feel important. A handshake from a presidential candidate can serve that purpose.
It is a little different in Pakistan. A handshake from Benazir Bhutto gave people hope. Not the homogenized hope sold by Obama, but real hope that things could be better. Hope that they would once again start to rebuild a society racked by corruption and greed. Hope that they could take back their country from a powerful military and corrupt fundamentalist warlords. I believe she knew how important this hope was. As she stood up through the sunroof of her limo, shaking hands- offering hope- she was murdered. She was murdered while standing up in a bullet proof, bombproof limo. She was murdered trying to offer her fellow Pakistani’s hope.
She also offered hope to the Bush administration. Ms. Bhutto was no friend of Al Qaeda, and would have been a staunch American ally. She would have been a democratically elected woman in a nation with a large Muslim population. She could have been an example of how a moderate, democratically elected government could have provided stability to a turbulent region. Regional stability is a top priority for the Bush administration- Pakistan has up to 50 nuclear weapons. These weapons would find their way in to the wrong hands, and conceivably across our border, if a fundamentalist regime rises out the current mayhem.
This could have been a storybook ending- or at least as close as we can expect nowadays. Bhutto wins the election, and President Musharref is allowed a quite exile. It would have been a victory for freedom, and for the United States.
Unfortunately, we have wound up with an altogether different situation. We are now stuck with an increasingly unpopular and ineffective Musharref. He is a friend of the United States by convenience. It is friendship forged of mutual necessity. The already strained relationship has reached a near breaking point, and this will be another major loss, if it turns out that the Pakistani government was behind the assassination.
50 nuclear weapons for sale- discounts for believers of the one true faith. That is a scary thought. One small nuclear device detonated in the Loop would cripple Illinois. Our leadership in commodities brokerage would be a dead as the traders walking down Jackson Blvd on their way to work from the train station. No need to worry about what to call the State Street Marshall Fields-it would be gone. Defense contractor Boeing would be decapitated. Insurance records would be vaporized. Both the State of Illinois and The City of Chicago would be stripped of their executive branch of government. Banking in the region would also be crippled. The dead and dieing citizens of Chicago would be counted in the hundred’s of thousands, with the rest of the region plunged into a media black out, and potential starvation. The scale of disaster would be unlike anything mankind had ever inflicted on itself.
This scenario needs to be prevented. We, as American’s, will have a huge stake I preventing it when we go to the polls to pick a new President. As I have said before, this is the most important Presidential election in the history of our nation. We will be choosing between victory and defeat. Between freedom and tyranny. We will be deciding if we want to defend the world we currently live in, or sink to the level of civilization illustrated by Ms. Bhutto’s assassination.
