Benazir Bhutto - Rest in Peace
Posted: December 30, 2007
The brutal assasination of former Pakistan Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, 54, in Rawalpindi was tragic and heart rending not just for her many supporters in Pakistan but for anyone that admired her grace and elegance, and saw in her in momentous opportunity for Pakistan, the second largest Muslim nation in the world, to move forward into the 21st century.
And what a powerful symbol it would have been.
With Jihadists everywhere, in the Palestinian territories, in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Afghanistan, Iran, Thailand, Europe, and elsewhere, seeking to impose their cruel vision of Islamo-totalitarianism on the rest of us, through whatever means necessary, including kidnapping, torture, suicide bombings, and beheadings, to have this powerful nuclear armed Muslim nation headed by a woman, and an open minded, pro-Western, secular, democratic, Harvard trained Islamic woman no less, popularly elected, would have sent shivers up their spine and weakened their pathologic movement enormously.
But that victory was taken from us by the terrorists.
In one fell swoop, they have eliminated what was probably the most reformist and progressive leader in the Muslim world, an eloquent and charismatic female Muslim leader who would have been an overwhelmingly powerful symbol and role model for women everywhere, especially Muslim women, and for everyone, really. What a welcome sight she would have been in a region riven by conflict, fanaticism, and oppression. The populalry elected, secular, pro democratic, pro Western Bhutto would have been the perfect antidote not only to the violent ideology of the fundamentalists but also to the corrupt potentates that rule virtually all of the various Muslim and Arab nations.
Yes, I know of the charges of corruption that surround her previous years as Prime Minister. I do not know the details, but to me, accusing Bhutto of corruption is akin to accusing a Mexican President of corruption. Not that it is an excuse, but aren't they all corrupt? In the context of third world nations that are almost universally crooked, it rings hollow. What is important is her devotion to liberal secular democracy and her desire to fight terror.
The Islamic Nazis hate freedom and democracy. They are threatened by it. It is inconcievable for them to imagine Muslims freely choosing democracy and human rights. They cannot envision a separation of mosque and state, which is needed for Muslim nations to progress. If Muslims freely choose to secularize and embrace democracy and leave religion as a personal private matter, that deligitimizes the Jihadists. It demonstrates for all the world to see, and especially the Muslim world, that they are not a popularly based movement but a fringe group of radical, violent lunatics that would impose a cruel and intolerant doctrine upon the rest of us. Bhutto's ascendancy in Pakistan, through overwhelming popular support and democratic elections, would have been a dagger to the heart of their movement, which is itself now based in the mountainous regions of Pakistan.
And so their victory here is a powerful one. It will embolden them. It will help their efforts to recruit and spread their poisonous message. They have removed a moving and convincing voice of freedom whose mere presence threatened them, let alone her anticipated election as leader of Pakistan. They have destabilized nuclear armed Pakistan. They have weakened US efforts dramatically in the region as well. If Iraq and Afghanistan are moving forward into legitimate, representative, consensual governance, how much more powerful a trend would it have been if Pakistan too had joined them?
So they have won a major battle. They have felled an articulate and courageous Muslim woman who most likely would been elected Prime Minister of the second largest Muslim nation. It is a pity and a shame. And, truly, I feel personally, somehow, for the loss of this elegant woman, although, I, of course, never knew her.
But they have not won the war. And perhaps there will come some unanticipated, as yet unknown, goodness from this. Some other great and compelling leader, perhaps, that will emerge from the ashes of her vicious murder who will captivate the nation, and in her memory, move into prominence, who will help the suffering, broken nation of Pakistan and deliver it into a new age of freedom and liberty and wreck the wicked and sickening movement of the Jihadis.
It is amazing though to ponder the utter lack of honor among the murdering jackals. Do they think nothing of killing women? Well, we know the answer. They think nothing of it, indeed. Happy to do it along with children and all innocents they can grasp with their grisly hands. They are dense stains of violence and immorality. They dishonor not just themselves and their religion but the universe itself. They emerge from an abyss of unthinking darkness, of primitive, bloodcurdling impulse with no recourse to light or compassion or dignity. They are a knot of twisted unformed subhuman urges that know not the glory of creation or bliss but only the eternity of night and pitiless hate. They are the offspring of fear and desecration with blackened charred souls who taint and befoul all they touch and imagine. They are unwashed and unclean and unhealed. They languish in obscenity, inhaling waste, loving that which is rank and impure, basking in wretchedness and barbarism, yet foolishly imagining themselves exalted. And for this reason, they are dangerous. We can only work vigilantly for their demise and unceremonious defeat, which cannot come soon enough, as terrorist vermin, unnatural afterbirths, unholy demons who have cast an unseemly pall over a broken and rended nation and world. Their end is forthcoming. Their anguish and despair will be a song of freedom.
Let no one doubt the merciless, bloodletting intentions of these writhing, deformed creatures who will not abandon their dream of death and devastation.
May Benazir Bhutto rest in peace and the free world and its allies not rest until her killers are brought to justice and the noxious Jihadist ideology crushed and vanquished.
Oscar Hoffman
commented on December 31, 2007 at 4:59 PMShe will surely be missed.