Thursday, December 27, 2007

Mrs. Bhutto

As inured as we may be to the flow of bloody news from that part of the world, the death of Benazir Bhutto comes as a shocking reminder of how deeply involved we now are in places where murder is part of the political process.

How will her assassination affect our own debate about dealing with a post-9/11 world in which our "friend" Pervez Musharraf promises to protect us from terrorists and is unable or unwilling to prevent such suicide attacks in his own country? How safe can we feel about a nuclear Pakistan so vulnerable to the will of extremists for whom killing is a form of religious and political expression?

Our own candidates, from the safety of Iowa and New Hampshire, will no doubt say all the right things about how tough, realistic and determined our policies should be in the face of this kind of reality. But how much more can they do than the clueless Bush Administration has done in protecting us from it?

No comments: