Benazir Bhutto

[libertango]

John Moore of Getty Images has a remarkable portfolio up at the New York Times' web site, complete with audio commentary, of the assassination. Some images include the explosion of the suicide bomber that followed.

Up until now, I've been thinking very much in strategic terms about the event. Now I find myself as bereft as when Anna Lindh was killed.

It's not just the single life in each case, tragic though that is. It's the hopeful future for both countries that was stolen, no matter what now happens in our time line, for good or for ill.

Comments

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty saddened by her death as well.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I've been finding the China Matters blog an invaluable commentary on Pakistan even before this happened. Here's a sample of today's post on the assassination:

'Pakistan was expecting that an unconstitutional backroom deal brokered by the United States with the acquiescence of a politically crippled president would somehow survive its way through the sausage grinder of opposition by the secular judiciary, the intelligence services, and Islamist forces, wind its way through an opaque, rigged parliamentary process, survive whatever street demonstrations got thrown at it, and emerge as a new, viable Pakistani polity.

'Maybe that was hoping for too much. Maybe Pakistan’s democrats realize that now.

'Pakistan will survive.

'But its democratic aspirations may not be so lucky.

'People have been eager to point the finger at Musharraf and/or the intelligence services for conniving in Bhutto’s assassination.

'I’m more inclined toward General Zinni’s take, which is that extremist Islamist elements wanted to put paid both to an American client and to Pakistani secular democracy, and create a crisis which would boost the strategic fortunes of groups like al Qaeda.'