It’s an Attack on US.

A crazy day, yesterday. For yours truly, lots of irons in the fire, some web development, my day gig some home duities, but of course, as with all of us, yesterday, before I even started the day came the news about the Benazir Bhutto assassination. So, while working through the days chores, I had some time to think about the implications of this, always making the assumption that the Pakistani government had nothing to do with her death.

In the end, even the additional security that the former prime minister was screaming about would not have made any difference. While that point is somewhat arguable, it is far less arguable that Musharraf having any direct connection to her death is highly unlikely at least.

Fox News’ John Gibson apparently working form the same foundation as I have been all day, makes what I think is an important point about the Bhutto killing, today:

Bringing modernity to Pakistan means bringing the Islamic extremists to heel. that’s an enormous problem in Pakistan where the Secret Service is riddled with Taliban sympathizers, where the military has been in cahoots with extremist agents for years, and the Western part of the country is controlled by extremists and is a no go zone for the Pakistani military.

So Bhutto was on our side, in the sense that she knew how dangerous Al Qaeda types were for her country and she was determined to see that they could not and would not take over.
In staking a position against Islamic extremism that was in many ways even tougher than the position taken by President Musharaff, it was clear that the extremists could not let her regain power in Pakistan.

So even though today’s carnage was on the other side of the planet, it really did strike close to home, and all Americans should be worried about what happens now. The way Americans can deal with this crisis is to carefully consider their vote. This election is about the same issue the last election was about… the War on Terror. It’s not about health care, and as important as our economy is, it’s not about that either.

We need someone who has the strength of mind and the resolve to see through an ugly fight that will have to be fought. It’s not a choice. The people who killed Bhutto would kill you too, and if the next president gives them a chance, they will do it.

In the end, there is nobody with the strength of mind and the resolve that Gibson talks about, amongst the crop of Democrats running for the White House. It’s just not there. More, there are a few running under the Republican banner, most notably Ron Paul, who don’t either.

I’ve seen an awful lot of commentary today, as regards the fallout of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination on American politics. At the end of the day, however, the only questions that really matter as regards the political fallout for the United States, and for that matter the remainder of the world, are the points that Gibson raises in his ‘My Words’ segment last evening.

Michelle notes Andy McCarthy:(Michelle didn’t do up a link for that)

A recent CNN poll showed that 46 percent of Pakistanis approve of Osama bin Laden. Aspirants to the American presidency should hope to score so highly in the United States. In Pakistan, though, the al-Qaeda emir easily beat out that country’s current president, Pervez Musharraf, who polled at 38 percent.

President George Bush, the face of a campaign to bring democracy — or, at least, some form of sharia-lite that might pass for democracy — to the Islamic world, registered nine percent. Nine!

If you want to know what to make of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto’s murder today in Pakistan, ponder that.

There is the Pakistan of our fantasy. The burgeoning democracy in whose vanguard are judges and lawyers and human rights activists using the “rule of law” as a cudgel to bring down a military junta. In the fantasy, Bhutto, an attractive, American-educated socialist whose prominent family made common cause with Soviets and whose tenures were rife with corruption, was somehow the second coming of James Madison.

Then there is the real Pakistan: an enemy of the United States and the West.

I doubt much of anyone was considering her in the kind of light that McCarthy projects this as.  All politics end up being focused on the path of least evil. Like it or not Bhutto, for all her faults… and I agree there were many… was the best path… and that’s why she got killed by Al Quieda.  And that’s soemthing that Michelle notes by way of quoting Wretchard:

Political murder kills not only the candidates, but the process to which they belong. Pakistani politics might not miss Benazir Bhutto as an individual, but it will surely want for the elections in general.

Elections have rarely been able in and of themselves to bring about stable democratic rule. Normally things are the other way round. It is the existence of the elements of democracy that have brought elections into existence. Whether those elements now exist in Pakistan is the question…The next few days will show whether the Pakistani Army — for it will surely not be the Taliban — can rededicate itself to electoral democracy. Pakistan needs its George Washington. Unfortunately it only has its Pervez Musharraf.

I’m actually encouraged by the noises currently coming from Musharraf, but we’ll see.

How successfully the elements Wretchard speaks of are maintained will in the end decide if Radical Islam takes hold in the government there.

Update: (Bit)

Boortz, who is supposed to me on vacation agrees with my take here:

Then there’s President Bush’s statement after the killing of Benazir Bhutto was wimpish .. at best. Not once did he invoke the dreaded “Islam” or “Islmanic” word. What happened to Bhutto yesterday goes to the core of this menacing religion. Pakistani President Perves Musharraf had the guts to say “Islamic extremists.” George Bush did not. Just remember, these people didn’t do anything to Benazir Bhutto that they wouldn’t like to do to tens of millions of Americans. The threat is only going to get worse until we start calling Islam what it truly is … a glorified death cult. If Muslims want to change this perception then let them stop whining about their negative image and start doing something positive to change it.

Memeorandum has a fair group of reax this morning. I expect this will dominate the news util after the new year. Come to think on it now, I wonder if that wasn’t part of the deal… I wonder if the killing wasn’t timed so as to maximize impact on our news cycles here. Wouldn’t surprise me if it was.