Right Place and Right Time?
By Mitch Berg
The essential David Warren on Bhutto:
Out of the bloody mess in Karachi — hundreds killed and maimed in Al Qaeda’s latest effort to gain power through psychopathic violence and intimidation — comes a kind of order. The position of Benazir Bhutto — the seemingly perpetual once and future prime minister of Pakistan — has been immensely enhanced by the failure of the blasts to kill her. If she can remain alive, she now has an unprecedented and almost miraculous opportunity to pull Pakistan together, and inspire her people to fight against their worst enemy in the world — not “Hindu India,” nor “Imperialist America,” but the Islamists who are feeding on the country’s entrails.
Should this – getting on-the-fence Pakistan heavily involved in fighting the war on terror, especially the part that’s based on their territory – work out, it’d be a key point in the war on terror.
The story – Bhutto, a famous, and famously-corrupt, woman elected by a popular vote but removed by a military coup that led to the also-corrupt Musharraf, who has nonetheless been a key, if “nuanced”, ally in the war on terror, and then returning to power – is an amazing one.
The power-sharing agreement Mrs Bhutto’s agents have apparently hashed out with President Musharraf’s agents must certainly be vague, and constitutionally incomprehensible. That is because it is founded only on necessity — a principle that trumps all constitutional law. Pakistan’s surprisingly independent supreme court may throw spanners in Musharraf’s recent “re-election,” or in the deal to withdraw corruption charges against Mrs Bhutto and her husband (that were themselves presented in a corrupt way). But for all their self-regard, the country’s nit-picking lawyers and judges are now more likely to realize what is at stake if they try to stand in the way of necessity.
Mrs Bhutto, and not President Musharraf, has the mass appeal, without which, at this moment, no politician or general in Pakistan has a chance against the whirlwind.
Read, as they say, the whole thing. And, as I’ve been urging for years, make sure you read Warren every week.
