Deciding vote.

Bhutto has been dead only a couple of days, and already the demagogic politicians and would-be presidents are spinning damage control for ex-general and president-for-as-long-as-he-likes Pervez Musharraf. Having invested so bullishly in this coup leader, Bush and company are reluctant to see his fortunes fall alongside the corpse of his chief political rival. In Pakistan as elsewhere, we build today's disastrous policies on those of yesteryear, compounding tragedy with farce and playing with whole nations as if they were mere instruments of our global ambitions. For decades we've supported strongman military leaders in Pakistan because it served our purposes to do so (one-stop political shopping, in effect - less haggling with popular leaders). The rationale in the 1970s and 80s was the fight against the U.S.S.R. in Afghanistan, an effort that amounted to a kind of Ford Foundation for jihadist groups, funded in part by the Saudis and facilitated by the CIA and Pakistan's I.S.I. intelligence service.

There's little doubt that elements in Pakistani intelligence and the military are tight with the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Aside from affinities attributable to Pashtun heritage, these are bonds forged over decades of working in tandem with one another. That's why, in part, sorting who is responsible for a major assassination of this type is bound to be a murky affair. Our own leaders are insisting that this is the work of terrorists, al Qaeda, etc., and that Musharraf and his crew are the forces of light against this profound darkness. But where do the terrorists end and the security forces begin, exactly? We've been pouring money into this apparatus for a generation, first in support of Islamic extremists (v. the Soviets) and later in opposition to them (or, at least, some segment of them that does not include extremists like Dostum in Afghanistan). Should we be surprised when the whole thing blows up in our faces?

For our great leaders, the issue doesn't even arise. We are directed to keep our gaze on the surface - just accept the most simplistic explanation... mindless violence by nihilistic fanatics who hate us for our freedom, our love of democracy, and our chewy goodness. That may work for domestic consumption, since the crime is so heinous, but it seems unlikely that the Pakistani people would accept this explanation. Political assassination is nothing new in Pakistan - Bhutto herself has been accused of employing this tactic in the past. Whatever her shortcomings, she was admired by a substantial number of people, many of whom see Musharraf as the party responsible for her killing. Our government has seen Bhutto only as a means of propping up Musharraf, who counts Cheney among his strongest advocates in the U.S. We are very closely associated with the President/General, and if he is seen as the despoiler of Pakistani's hopes for a more open society, they may start hating us even more than they do already.

Today the exact circumstances of Bhutto's death are in dispute - the government has one story and PPP witnesses have another. Sounds like another big foreign policy success on the way. Stay tuned.

luv u,

jp