Category: The Dish

Shadi Hamid tells me not to worry.

That was my hunch. Dickerson and Weigel agree on the domestic beneficiary of the news. Meanwhile, Clinton manages to spin again. It really is always about her, isn’t it?

Hitch doesn’t buy the idea that Musharraf was behind the assassination:

Who knows who did this deed? It is grotesque, of course, that the murder should have occurred in Rawalpindi, the garrison town of the Pakistani military elite and the site of Flashman’s Hotel. It is as if she had been slain on a visit to West Point or Quantico. But it’s hard to construct any cui bono analysis on which Gen. Pervez Musharraf is the beneficiary of her death. The likeliest culprit is the al-Qaida/Taliban axis, perhaps with some assistance from its many covert and not-so-covert sympathizers in the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence. These were the people at whom she had been pointing the finger since the huge bomb that devastated her welcome-home motorcade on Oct. 18.

Anonymous Liberal makes an interesting case for Democrats to back Obama:

If Hillary Clinton is the nominee, I suspect that the dominant media narrative will be the dynastic element of the election (Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton). I suspect the media dynamic will be very similar to campaign 2000, where press coverage was overwhelming tilted in favor of the Republican candidate. If Obama is the nominee, however, I suspect that the dominant media narrative will be the historic nature of the election. Coverage will revolve around America’s willingness to take a giant leap forward as a country and elect its first black president. And I think the mainstream press corps–who are political junkies at heart–will be rooting for that outcome, in much the same way sports fans rooted for the Red Sox in 2004. They wanted to see history being made. The Republican candidate, whoever it turns out to be, will have to try very hard not to be seen a merely a footnote to history.

It seems absurd to think of the domestic campaign ramifications, but my gut tells me this helps McCain. If you look at the GOP field and you ask yourself who would you want in the White House right now, McCain leaps out at you as the one with the experience and the judgment to deal with this. On the Democratic side, it’s not so obvious, since Clinton’s "experience" is much less than meets the eye. But it helps her nonetheless. Novak, meanwhile, is touting McCain:

Sen. John McCain, given up for dead a few weeks ago as he ran a cash-starved, disorganized campaign, today is viewed by canny Republican professionals as the best bet to win the party’s presidential nomination. What’s more, they consider him their most realistic prospect to buck the overall Democratic tide and win the general election. Indeed, if Mike Huckabee holds on to actually win the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses, the road forward could be clear for McCain.

RedState’s Erick chimes in here.

(Photo: Alex Wong/Getty.)

We can and should think now of the political and military ramifications of the Bhutto assassination, but it is also the murder of yet another member of Nusrat Bhutto’s family. Adil Nijam remarks:

At a human level this is a tragedy like no other. Only a few days ago I was mentioning to someone that the single most tragic person in all of Pakistan – maybe all the world – is Nusrat Bhutto. Benazir’s mother. Think about it. Her husband, killed. One son poisoned. Another son assasinated. One daughter dead possibly of drug overdose. Another daughter rises to be Prime Minister twice, but jailed, exiled, and finally gunned down.

Today, in shock, I can think only of Benazir Bhutto the human being. Tomorrow, maybe, I will think of politics.

Other Pakistani bloggers react here.

"If it means sacrificing our lives, if it means sacrificing our liberties to save Pakistan, then we are prepared to risk our lives and we are prepared to risk our liberties, but we are not prepared to surrender our great nation to the militants," – Benazir Bhutto.

Lose-lose-win for Musharraf? He may well now extend emergency rule, but at what cost? DJ Drummond:

The government of President Musharraf is in a state of chaos. At best, he will be harshly blamed for not protecting Bhutto (there was an earlier attempt to kill Bhutto in October which left 140 dead, but security for Bhutto was not improved), and at present his possible complicity in the murder is widely suspected and in some places assumed. There has as yet been no official statement from U.S. officials; it must be presumed that the assassination has pre-empted normal business.

Bhutto was not perfect by any means: corrupt and self-serving. But given all the alternatives, it’s a crushing blow:

Her personal failing undermined, but did not eradicate, the principles she stood for within Pakistan, which have been characterized by Brookings scholar Stephen Cohen as "progressive social and economic policies; accommodation with India; good relations with all of the major powers (including the United States); gender empowerment; and a commitment to parliamentary democracy and a free press."

In short, Cohen’s view was that a Bhutto election was the foundation necessary for the country to address those who would tear it apart into further spiraling violence.

Today, Pakistan lurches one step closer towards that frightening outcome. The assassination of Benazir Bhutto, like too many other assassinations before it, has just changed history, and not for the better.

Blake Hounshell expresses my own response thus:

I’m in shock, and yet not altogether surprised.

What we are witnessing in the Islamic world is something we should learn to be somewhat reticent about. There is so much we do not know – and what we do know suggests a period of extreme and dangerous instability we will have only limited capacity to affect, if at all. A Bhutto deal with Musharraf meant a rational, sane option for Pakistan to Western diplomatic minds. But this world is a darker, more irrational place than we know. And these convulsions will surely continue. It may be that our attempt to fix the situation has only made it worse. Which would not be the first time, of course.

(Photo: John Moore/Getty.)

It seems to me to be hard to understand the implications of the Bhutto assassination until we know who actually murdered her. Al Qaeda is taking responsibility and they have every reason to hate her, but a little skepticism is always in order, when it comes to their pronouncements. The assassin was a suicide bomber, but he shot her first, and shot her in the neck. If you were part of the military or ISI, it would be in your interest to shoot Bhutto to ensure she was killed and then blow yourself up both to associate the murder with Jihadists outside the military and to destroy the evidence.

Until we know more, it seems to me that al Qaeda’s responsibility is actually the more optimistic scenario. If Islamists within the military or ISI did this, then we have the possibility that this is the beginning of something more ominous than the surface event. The collapse of Pakistan into a Jihadist nuclear power is the great nightmare. Here’s hoping that however grim this news, the worst isn’t yet to come.

(Photo: A survivor is overcome with emotion at the site of a bomb blast attack on former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on December 27, 2007 in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. By John Moore/Getty Images.)

Ross and Reihan made a couple of points recently about the way in which lower middle class voters – who may have much higher rates of illegitimacy, teen pregnancy, and abortion than upper middle class Americans – often favor social conservatives such as Mike Huckabee. Ross:

There’s actually a serious argument for why Mike Huckabee (or any social conservative) ought to find his strongest constituency among people with the misfortune to grow up in a world where meeting your boyfriend at church and having his baby out of wedlock aren’t mutually exclusive propositions.

Reihan:

All this brings to mind the debate over, as conservatives put it, the sanctity of marriage, and in particular same-sex marriage. Why is it that the same voters who are most likely to experience divorce or family disruption are often the same voters who oppose same-sex marriage and other socially liberal measures? As Garance Franke-Ruta put it,

Lower-income individuals simply live in a much more disrupted society, with higher divorce rates, more single moms, more abortions, and more interpersonal and interfamily strife, than do the middle- and upper-middle class people they want to be like. It should come as no surprise that the politics of reaction is strongest where there is most to react to.

But, er, what does this actually logically have to do with same-sex marriage? How does allowing gay couples to get married somehow impact the illegitimacy rates of the Spears family? The only conceivable linkage is that many rednecks’ disdain of gays means that allowing us to marry inherently debases the institution and thereby makes it less attractive. But this argument requires raw prejudice as a premise. And a premise that Ross and Reihan – who have not a soupcon of homophobia between them – just assume as a given.

The second assumption is that same-sex marriage is, in Reihan’s words, a "socially liberal measure", and therefore legitimately opposed by social conservatives. But why is it "socially liberal" to encourage mutual responsibility, caring, fidelity, economic prudence, and an institution that fosters self-esteem, family integration and social responsibility? In a society where gay people exist, why is it a socially conservative position to ensure that they are discouraged from mutual caring and responsibility and encouraged – by stigma and marginalization and legal discrimination – to engage in all those activities that the depressed, alienated and despised often do: drug use, alcoholism, sexual irresponsibility, instability, and social isolation?

I know I’ve made this case a thousand times. But it never seems to penetrate. I understand why it makes no sense to Huckabee supporters, for whom gay relationships are anathema for purely Biblical reasons (however irrationally applied). But it still depresses me that allegedly tolerant figures in the intelligentsia still assume it, and almost never challenge it.