"She was a splendid con"

Lively, witty presentation and totally awesome photos at Catalogue of Organisms' Circus of the Spineless #28. Above, Jennifer Forman Orth's clearwing butterfly. Our fave was the assassin bug's trick of donning the empty exoskeletons of its ant victims to fool predators. There was something so political about it. Say what, Hillary?

"I don't mean to speak ill of the dead, but let's do it anyway," PJM alpha male Richard Miniter is telling a Fox News babe late afternoon [rough drive-by transcript]:

This is a woman who's tied to money scandals, political scandals. Many are asking why is the Bush administration pushing this woman as someone [who could be helpful to Pakistan's future as a democracy]? She was not very popular. That we were trying to impose her [into the electoral landscape] was deeply resented.

That jibes nicely with the post incubating in the febrile blogging mind this very moment. Our gut response when we learned yesterday morning of former Pakistani PM Benazir Bhutto's assassination was -- as we wrote in the comments at Gates of Vienna, who seemed to be on the same page -- WW IV?:

The assassination of the Archduke [considered by historians to have triggered WW I] was the first thing that came to mind. The second was the Taliban's assassination of Ahmad Shah Massoud just before 9/11.

We know as little about Pakistani history and politics as the average bear, but somewhere in our alleged mind there lingered a faded memory of Bhutto's having been a corrupt -- if brilliant -- all-about-me astroturf-roots socialist "savior" of her downtrodden people. Ralph Peters's "Not what she seemed to be" in today's NYPost brought it all into focus. A few excerpts (Be sure to read the whole thing):

For the next several days, you're going to read and hear a great deal of pious nonsense in the wake of the assassination of Pakistan's former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto [See below for a delicious example of the genre, Ariana Huffington's frothy if fascinating homage to her longtime friend].

Her country's better off without her. She may serve Pakistan better after her death than she did in life . . . She was a splendid con, persuading otherwise cynical Western politicians and "hardheaded" journalists that she was not only a brave woman crusading in the Islamic wilderness, but also a thoroughbred democrat.

In fact, Bhutto was a frivolously wealthy feudal landlord amid bleak poverty. The scion of a thieving political dynasty, she was always more concerned with power than with the wellbeing of the average Pakistani. Her program remained one of old-school patronage, not increased productivity or social decency . . .

But she always knew how to work Westerners -- unlike the hapless Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who sought the best for his tormented country but never knew how to package himself.

The undigestible Ariana Huffington, a westerner in thrall to the oft-cited charisma of Benazir Bhutto, nevertheless came by her admiration honestly:

She was at Oxford. I was at Cambridge. And by a strange coincidence I became president of the Cambridge Union and she became president of the Oxford Union. The anomaly of two foreign women heading the two unions meant that we ended up debating each other around England on topics ranging from British politics to broad generalities about the impact of technological advance on mankind.

"I asked her to blog before she returned to Pakistan and blog she did," writes Huffington. Quite a "get," albeit a self-justifying bit of spin on Bhutto's part:

I long ago realized that my personal life was to be subjugated to my political responsibilities. When my democratically elected father, Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was arrested in 1977 and subsequently murdered, the mantle of leadership of the Pakistan Peoples Party, our nation's largest, nationwide grassroots political structure, was suddenly thrust upon me. It was not the life I planned, but it is the life I have. My husband and children accept and understand that my political responsibilities to the people of Pakistan come first [God help the children], as painful as that personally is to all of us. I would like to be planning my son's move to his first year at college later this month, but instead I am planning my return to Pakistan and my party's parliamentary election campaign.

I didn't choose this life. It chose me.

Cloying enough for you? Try this for an antidote. Tuck is half way through The Reagan Diaries, a gift from us to Goomp last Father's Day that our hubby dips into whenever we visit Down East:

Boy, the Reagan Diaries are great. I had read Reagan In His Own Hand, and what he had that I'm not convinced the current crop of candidates have is that lifelong commitment -- and commitment to the right things. I mean Hillary's got a lifelong commitment, but."

Commitment to the right things. We suppose it depends upon what your definition of right is.

Update: Maggie's Farm links, and blog bookmarker tags us "brave."

Comments

[goomp]

Let us cheer for the USA, the freest nation the world ever saw. Let us strive to keep her free.

[Teresa]

"She was a splendid con, persuading otherwise cynical Western politicians and "hardheaded" journalists that she was not only a brave woman crusading in the Islamic wilderness..."

I find the remark above distinctly distasteful. He MUST be stating that she was a stupid woman - too dumb to understand that her life was in danger or too full of herself to understand... that is the only explanation I can contrive from such a sentence.

As she, like every other politician, rose to her place through strategy in a very cunning and deceit filled world, to call her stupid is very offensive and the same trick the left uses when it wants to denigrate an opponent. If he thought she was that full of herself - then why would she purposely put herself in danger if she thought she was that important? Neither scenario is sensible and both are insulting.

I may not like the politics she espoused, she may have been the darling of the left here in the US... she may even have been corrupt as all get out. But to walk into the lion's den knowing full well they could jump you at any time... I think he could have attributed bravery to her at the very least - even if he liked nothing else about her. (yes there are times when even the enemy could be accounted brave that doesn't make them less your enemy)

Just my take on it.

[Beth]

I admit I sort of--well, not "sort of," but definitely--resented her reintroduction into the circus that is Paki politics, simply because it rocked the boat. Like Musharraf needed it? Okay, so Musharraf is by no means perfect either, to say the least, but he's the best we can do right now. And by "we," yes, I do mean "the US." For that matter, the rest of the world. I think the idea of democracy is lovely, but in Pakistan...well, I don't have high expectations. I don't even see them getting to the level of India simply because of their tribal/Islamic population. The reappearance of Benazir Bhutto, brave as it was for her, just upset the delicate balance there, and for what? I think Peters pretty much nailed it.

And yes, I wonder if this is (again) the precursor to something much larger. I guess we'll see soon enough, depending on Musharraf's longevity. Frankly, I'm surprised he's lasted this long.

[S.Weasel]

I can't help thinking about those other people who died in the attacks around Bhutto. The first one, when she first showed up, and the last one, the one that killed her.

After the first bomb (at least), it should've been obvious that an extraordinary level of caution was called for. Parades, people massing in the streets, standing out an open sunroof? Clearly not wise, and it doesn't take hindsight to realize it.

I hesitate to type the word, but her return strikes me as more selfish than brave.