It was quite a shock this morning to hear that Benazir Bhutto, the former Prime Minister of Pakistan, was assassinated; although to be honest I had this awful feeling it was coming. Crook she may have been, but she was perhaps the last best hope to bring her divided country together.
Some of my co-workers suspect that Musharraf was behind this. I have a feeling they're quite right. Nothing is more threatening to the powerful than the voice of the powerless. In the present instance, the stakes are that much higher not just because of the al-Qaeda presence in Pakistan but also the fact that it, like India, has nuclear weapons.
Tonight, even the true believers must ask at what price has Bush's unfailing support for Musharraf has exacted; and why he took so long to insist that democracy had to be restored. I don't think most Americans agreed to go to Afghanistan just so they could prop up a dictator or to create even more instability. Nor do I think they agreed to yet another excuse to impinge on fundamental freedoms.
Yet that's exactly what we're going to get in the coming weeks and months. Hopefully in the confusion that reigns, Osama Bin Laden is finally caught and killed.
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