From the WSJ Opinion Archives
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Who
Killed Benazir Bhutto?
A report in the New York Sun suggests that yesterday's assassination was a complicated
plot:
American and Pakistani military leaders are seeking to account for what may be renegade commando units from the Pakistani military's special forces in the wake of the assassination of Pakistan's opposition leader and former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto.
The attack yesterday at Rawalpindi bore the hallmarks of a sophisticated military operation. At first, Bhutto's rally was hit by a suicide bomb that turned out to be a decoy. According to press reports and a situation report of the incident relayed to The New York Sun by an American intelligence officer, Bhutto's armored limousine was shot by multiple snipers whose armor-piercing bullets penetrated the vehicle, hitting the former premier five times in the head, chest, and neck. Two of the snipers then detonated themselves shortly after the shooting, according to the situation report, while being pursued by local police. . . .
A working theory, according to this American source, is that Al Qaeda or affiliated jihadist groups had effectively suborned at least one unit of Pakistan's Special Services Group, the country's equivalent of Britain's elite SAS commandos. This official, however, stressed this was just a theory at this point. Other theories include that the assassins were trained by Qaeda or were from other military services, or the possibility that the assassins were retired Pakistani special forces.
Agence France-Presse, however, reports from Islamabad that the Pakistani government is telling quite a different story:
Pakistan's interior ministry said Friday that Benazir Bhutto died from hitting her vehicle's sunroof when she tried to duck after a suicide attack, and that no bullet or shrapnel was found in her.
Ministry spokesman Brigadier Javed Cheema said the opposition leader had died from a head wound she sustained when she smashed against the sunroof's lever as she tried to shelter inside the car.
So the assassins missed, but Bhutto died trying to duck? We guess this scenario is not unimaginable, but it certainly seems unlikely. One can't help suspecting that Cheema's tale is designed to paint the assassins as incompetent and unprofessional, and thereby take the heat off Islamabad for the possibility that elements of the military were complicit.
Then again, if the Interior Ministry can't come up with a more plausible cover story than this, maybe the premise overstates the degree of competence and professionalism that prevails in the Pakistani government.
You Don't Say
- "Analysis: Bhutto's Death Shakes Pakistan"--headline, Associated
Press, Dec. 28
- "Musharraf's Political Future Appears Troubled"--headline, New York Times, Dec. 28
Boilerplate
Battle
About the only good thing that can be said about the current campaign for the
Democratic presidential nomination is that Barack Obama has a great personality.
The Washington Post reports that Obama and his chief rival, Hillary Clinton,
responded to yesterday's assassination in ways that, according to the subheadline,
"illustrate their key differences." But to our mind it just illustrates
their shallowness.
Obama's campaign seized on the occasion to attack . . . the liberation of Iraq:
Three hours after news of Bhutto's slaying broke, Obama delivered a withering rebuke of [Mrs.] Clinton's experience, depicting her lengthy political résumé as a hindrance to solving big problems, including crises abroad. In an especially charged moment, senior Obama adviser David Axelrod would later tie the killing to the Iraq war--and Clinton's vote to approve it, which he argued diverted U.S. resources from fighting terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan, both al-Qaeda hotbeds.
"You can't at once argue that you're the master of a broken system in Washington and offer yourself as the person to change it," Obama said. "You can't fall in line behind the conventional thinking on issues as profound as war and offer yourself as the leader who is best prepared to chart a new and better course for America."
"The Iraq war . . . diverted U.S. resources from fighting terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan" is Obama's idea of bold and unconventional thinking. To the rest of the world, it's liberal boilerplate.
Mrs. Clinton, for her part, "described Bhutto in terms Obama . . . could not: as a fellow mother, a pioneering woman following in a man's footsteps, and a longtime peer on the world stage." And if being "a fellow mother" doesn't qualify Mrs. Clinton to be the leader of the free world, what could? CBS News quotes her:
"I have known Benazir Bhutto for more than 12 years; she's someone whom I was honored to visit as first lady when she was prime minister," Clinton said at a campaign event in a firehouse in western Iowa. "Certainly on a personal level, for those of us who knew her, who were impressed by her commitment, her dedication, her willingness to pick up the mantle of her father, who was also assassinated, it is a terrible, terrible tragedy," she said.
But apparently Mrs. Clinton didn't know Bhutto all that well. CBS News notes that Mrs. Clinton also said, "I grieve for her family, particularly her two children." But according to India's Economic Times, Bhutto leaves three children: son Bilawal, 19, and daughters Bakhtawar and Asifa, 17 and 14 respectively.
The Obama campaign is on to something when it suggests that Mrs. Clinton's "experience" is not entirely an argument in her favor. In fact, it offers two arguments against her, though either one is awkward for Obama to make. The first one is illustrated by this passage from a report from Wednesday's New York Times:
During [Bill Clinton's] two terms in the White House, Mrs. Clinton did not hold a security clearance. She did not attend National Security Council meetings. She was not given a copy of the president's daily intelligence briefing. She did not assert herself on the crises in Somalia, Haiti and Rwanda.
And during one of President Bill Clinton's major tests on terrorism, whether to bomb Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998, Mrs. Clinton was barely speaking to her husband, let alone advising him, as the Lewinsky scandal sizzled.
Obama could point out that her "experience" as first lady does not make Mrs. Clinton any more qualified to be president than are Betty Ford, Rosalyn Carter, Nancy Reagan, Barbara Bush or Laura Bush. But then again, is Obama any more qualified to be president than any of these ladies? After all, he was a mere state legislator when Mrs. Clinton was finishing her fourth year in the Senate.
The other problem with Mrs. Clinton's experience argument is that it reopens the question of whether her husband was an adequate foreign-policy president. This is from the same Times report:
Asked to cite a significant foreign policy object lesson from the 1990s, Mrs. Clinton also replied with broad observations. "There are a lot of them," she said. "The whole unfortunate experience we've had with the Bush administration, where they haven't done what we've needed to do to reach out to the rest of the world, reinforces my experience in the 1990s that public diplomacy, showing respect and understanding of people's different perspectives--it's more likely to at least create the conditions where we can exercise our values and pursue our interests."
This is meant to be just boilerplate. But if you take Mrs. Clinton's words seriously, they point to the fruits of her husband's "public diplomacy"--that is to say, to the failures of his foreign policy: humiliation in Somalia, genocide in Rwanda, stalemate in Iraq, chaos in Afghanistan leading to terror attacks against America in, among other places, Kenya, Tanzania and Yemen. And it strains credulity to suggest that a breakdown in "public diplomacy" in the first 234 days of the Bush administration is what led to the attacks of Sept. 11.
So Obama could argue that Bill Clinton was a failure as a foreign-policy president. But guess how well that would go over with the Democratic primary electorate? Since Obama cannot go after Mrs. Clinton on her real substantive weaknesses, he is going to have to hope that his own personal appeal, combined with Democratic voters' personal antipathy for her, is sufficient to win him the nomination. That it may well be, but is this any way to choose a president?
NOW
or Never
Benazir Bhutto's assassination was a sort of grim feminist milestone. She was,
as far as we can remember, the most important female political figure to be
assassinated since Indira Gandhi in 1984. (Another was Safia
Ama Jan, an official with Afghanistan's Ministry of Women's Affairs, who
was gunned down last year.) And as silly as Hillary Clinton's "fellow mother"
comment was, she was right to describe Bhutto as "a pioneering woman"--all
the more notably since South Asian Muslim societies are not as forward-looking
when it comes to women's roles as we in the West are.
So what does the National Organization for Women, America's premier feminist organization, have to say about Bhutto's life and death? Only this: . We did a search for "Bhutto" on NOW's Web site and it came up empty. The top item under "Hot Topics" on NOW's homepage is "NOW's Naughty List: Stereotyping Toys" Here's NOW head Kim Gandy:
Naturally the NOW office has been abuzz about the ubiquitous "Rose Petal Cottage" TV commercials. If you haven't seen these ads, count yourself lucky. Honestly, if I didn't know better, I would think they were beamed in from 1955, via some lost satellite in space. . . .
According to the makers at Playskool, the Rose Petal Cottage is "a place where her dreams have room to grow." And what might those dreams be? Well, baking muffins, arranging furniture and doing the dishes. The voiceover even declares that the toy house will "entertain her imagination" just before the little girl opens the miniature washing machine and says--I kid you not--"Let's do laundry!" . . .
Through the world of toys, girls and boys are given separate dreams to follow. Girls are prepared for a future of looking pretty, keeping house and taking care of babies. Boys are given a pass on that domain, and instead pointed toward the outside world of challenge, physical development and achievement.
NOW has a different vision. When your daughter grows up, she can follow the example of Kim Gandy: grab a broom and sweep invidious stereotypes right out of the toy aisle! International politics? That's icky, leave it to the boys!
The
Late Great Planet Earth
This is almost too ridiculous to note, but Dave Lindorff--whom we sighted
in 2003 likening George W. Bush to Hitler and straining to sound "reasonable"
about it--has an essay at a Web site called Baltimore Chronicle & Sentinel
in which he describes what he calls the "a silver lining" of global
warming:
Look at a map of the US.
The area that will by completely inundated by the rising ocean--and not in a century but in the lifetime of my two cats--are the American southeast, including the most populated area of Texas, almost all of Florida, most of Louisiana, and half of Alabama and Mississippi, as well as goodly portions of eastern Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina. . . .
So what we see is that huge swaths of conservative America are set to face a biblical deluge in a few more presidential cycles.
Drought in the Midwest and extreme heat in the Southwest will render those areas uninhabitable too, "so the future political map of America is likely to look as different as the much shrunken geographical map, with much of the so-called 'red' state region either gone or depopulated":
There is a poetic justice to this of course. . . . The important thing is that we, on the higher ground both actually and figuratively, need to remember that, when they begin their historic migration from their doomed regions, we not give them the keys to the city. They certainly should be offered assistance in their time of need, but we need to keep a firm grip on our political systems, making sure that these guilty throngs who allowed the world to go to hell are gerrymandered into political impotence in their new homes. . . .
It should be considered acceptable, in this stifling new world, to say, "Shut up. We told you this would happen."
We bring this up not because it is an argument that is worth taking seriously, and not to tar more-mainstream adherents to climate-change theory by associating them with this kook, but merely to point out that this sounds a lot like the "rapture" myths propounded by some Christian fundamentalists. Global warmism really does look a lot like religion.
Reliable
Sources
From an Associated Press report about a tiger mauling at the San Francisco Zoo:
Brothers Paul Dhaliwal, 19, and Kulbir Dhaliwal, 23, were at San Francisco General Hospital with severe bite and claw wounds. Their names were provided by hospital and law enforcement sources who spoke on condition of anonymity because the family had not yet given permission to release their names.
Our guess is that the family members wanted the sources to withhold the names of the injured men, not of the sources themselves.
Whatever
Happened to Professional Courtesy?
"Congress Leaves Circuses Hanging"--headline, Paris (Texas) News,
Dec. 27
The
Coroner Listed the Cause of Death as 'Curiosity'
"Bremerton Woman Says Generator Fumes Killed Her Cat"--headline, Associated
Press, Dec. 27
And
With a Name Like That, Who Can Blame Him?
"Yung Joc Says He Wants to Clear His Name"--headline, Associated Press,
Dec. 28
Breaking
News From 1521
"Aztecs Working on Not Shooting Bricks"--headline, San Diego Union-Tribune,
Dec. 28
News You Can Use
- "Police Say if Drivers Would Slow Down, Less Accidents Would Occur
When It Snows"--headline, Idaho
Statesman, Dec. 27
- "Cursing Teenagers Make Poor Parents"--headline, Sheffield (England) Star, Dec. 28
Bottom Stories of the Day
- "Firing of Spanish-Speakers Leaves Many Unfazed"--headline, Boston
Globe, Dec. 28
- "Prison Inmates Dislike Unstylish Pajamas"--headline, Reuters, Dec. 27
Lions
and Tigers and Terror! Oh My!
The tiger mauling at the San Francisco Zoo--mentioned in an earlier
item--prompts this letter to the editor of the San Francisco Chronicle (third
letter):
Editor--It's time to close down the San Francisco Animal Detention Center, euphemistically known as "the Zoo." The most unfortunate and tragic tiger attack reminds us that Siberian tigers belong in . . . Siberia.
Since their abduction, detained animals have no legal recourse and suffer privations of limited space and insufficient species company. From a city whose majority opposes our government's conduct at Guantanamo, I expect nothing less than dismantling and repatriation.
EV SHAFRIR
Mountain View
Wow, this guy is a hard-core right-winger! We certainly take his point that the terrorists at Guantanamo are dangerous, but even we would not directly liken them to animals.
(Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Doug Levene, Lewis Sckolnick, Ethel Fenig, Scott Wright, Cheryl Sturm, Dave Bell, Rick Geiger, Bud Hammons, John Nernoff, Ray Giourard, Dagny Billings, Brent Silver, Paul Dyck, Shaun Jennings, Bob Krumm, Jim Jenkins, Keith Rasmussen, Karl Ahnell, Daniel Goldstein, Aaron Zalewski, Ken Jorgensen, Richard Haisley, Anil Adyanthaya, Michael Meachen, Josh Gray, Jason Shanker, Michael Hutchison, George Struve, Kevin Patrick, Scott Ott, Bryan Fischer, Charlie Gaylord, Nick Marble and Charles Sykes. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
Today on OpinionJournal:
- Review & Outlook: Losing in the West, the jihadis hit Pakistan, with its nuclear prize.
- Peggy Noonan: In search of a reasonable president.
- Kim Strassel: Barack Obama and the burden of liberalism.
- The Journal Editorial Report: Tune in this weekend as the board rings in 2008.
And on the Taste page:
- Naomi Riley: "What will prevent the 250-pound linebacker from deciding he wants to share the locker room with the cheerleaders?"
- John Fund: Why Charlie Wilson's war couldn't happen today.
- Wilfred McClay: Elmer Gantry turns 80.
