Soooo... it has been so long since anyone has posted anything to this forum, I thought I would give it a kick start. I was reading about Bhutto's assassination, a real tragedy - but not unexpected to be honest; when I came across this article (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22435920/).

What are your thoughts on how this will affect our government and the endless battle going on in Iraq?

My personal take on this. Bhutto was far from innocent. She was exiled for a reason, the corruption charges and kickbacks of over $1.5 billion dollars, and wanted in Switzerland, Britain and somewhere else, besides Pakistan, amongst other reasons, her husband and the murders and such. Basically, I can see why she was assassinated, with her policies she was working out with yes, us the U.S.

She threatened basically, the frontier areas of Pakistan and the tribal leaders as well as islamic extremists, residing in the region(aka Bin Laden and crew), as well as Musharaf and his emergency rule and powers. She pretty much just pissed off everyone. So, the difficulty of proving who did the assassination(not just the identity of the killer) and the motivations will be quite difficult to pin on any one group.

While the Bush administration does back Musharaf's rule, they did seek to legitimize with the democratic elections, Musharaf, Sharif(although indirectly since ineligible for the election), and Bhutto by getting them all to run for office. How I see this is yet another blunder by the Bush administration, trying to setup a friendly goverment in which we could easily manipulate in that region.

So, the results is mixed right now, the next few months could see potential civil war in Pakistan(which is bad considering they are nuclear), peacekeeping missions with the United Nations(which would hamper the efforts of the Bush adminstration who wanted to go after militants). Other possiblities include Musharaf becoming the legit President in the region and his continued brutal rule, deposed justice systems and all that, and several other scenarios like Musharaf being deposed and possibly being executed. It will be a wait and see deal, as there are many different scenarios that can play out, some of which are listed, some of which are not.

How this effects Iraq, not much for now. But, the possibilities are endless, further deployments of US troops for peacekeeping missions, further spreading out thinly stretched forces. A really pissed off India and China as they will get dragged into this heavily.

A very very corrupt democrat.

Or a less corrupt dictator.

Which is your choice?




I choose neither. Those people trying to make Bhutto out to be some saint or martyr need to be distrusted, either for their naivete or their ulterior motives.

I agree with Fyyr here, it is a pretty bum rap for Pakistan either way, prior to Bhutto's death, and afterwards as well.

I think you can't be a leader in the current Pakistan and not be a little corrupt.

Does that excuse the current (or past) leaders? No.

However, what leader could we back that would not have the hint of corruption that would then be elected?

Her, personally?

She ignored warnings that there were plots against her, from what I've heard. She apparently ( or maybe not) made comments against those plots, saying, essentially, "let them try". Apparently, they did. And succeeded.

Did she want to be a martyr for Pakistan? Only time will reveal if that is so.

Umm if you haven't noticed... EVERY leader is corrupt in some way, it just happens (thought not defending the exceptional corruption happening in this instance) not that I'm defending corruption at all, but it is a norm and you kind of expect it to happen, or at least I do, especially living in Illinois.

LOL Gegan... I am originally from Illinois, now a Hoosier (ya I know) but I do have to say, Illinois has had it's problems of late.

I think people are right about the corruption problem though. I did kind of admire Bhutto's defiance against those trying to assasinate her. The problem I had with that was everytime they tried before, innocent people were hurt and/or killed - yet she continued to go out in public.

y main concern is how the US is going to react to the uproar in Pakistan now. Is Al-Qeda still a controlling force? Would this be the time to do something about it? Maybe re-focus on Bin Laden?

Well the good news is that a commission found that Pakistan's nukes (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17728986) are probably safe from the hands of the crazies there. The Bush policy in Pakistan was based on personalities and not political parties, so they're up **** creek without a friend right now. We were busy making nice-y nice with Bhutto and didn't pay attention to the other political parties, so they probably aren't going to be receptive to working with the USA on stuff.

And so it seems that the US must once again back a military dictator who usurped power from an elected democracy... gosh we seem to do that a lot.

But don't that democracy is one of the hardest political system to impose outside direction? And for would be world wide leaders, it make them to work evely at eatch election to be sure to be on friendly level with the new deciders; it a lot less work to work with a dictator for the next 20 years (and need your help to keep his power) that having to negociate eatch 4-5 years with comities.

In the short and average time, working with dictator can work well, in the long time all depend of the dictator (it can go very very bad, or more rarely well).

All depend of how much power you give to diplomaty (it take a lot of time). The power of the armies is a lot faster but you will see rarely it last long and able to cover every place.

Eridalafar

I can't imagine the assassination of Benazir Bhutto will change much in terms of US policy. The transferral of power from the military dictatorship to a civilian authority is still important. It would be good to see a movement away from the cult of personality towards issue driven politics but it's not going to happen.

We will have to wait and see how Musharaff handles the aftermath of the assassination and the elections, if and when they happen. How he acts will determine the response of western governments. I have a bad feeling about the twists and turns to come in this story.