CONSILIENCE PRODUCTIONS | "dialogue BEYOND music" | Democracy Blog and Forum | Benazir Bhutto...R.I.P.

« Big Media Consolidation, Part II | Main | Experience and the Race to the White House »

December 30, 2007 7:23 AM

It's so hard to believe that the first woman leader of a Muslim country was murdered...especially as she was set to make a comeback in Pakistan. She was first elected Prime Minister back in 1988 at age 35, and although her leadership was mired in allegations of corruption, she seemed to be a beacon of light over the years. The Western press certainly adored her...

The Guardian has a fairly extensive synopsis on her life and the continuing controversy after her death.

And Christopher Hitchens has written an obituary in Slate that shouldn't be missed (apparently he knew her fairly well). It starts:

The sternest critic of Benazir Bhutto would not have been able to deny that she possessed an extraordinary degree of physical courage. When her father was lying in prison under sentence of death from Pakistan's military dictatorship in 1979, and other members of her family were trying to escape the country, she boldly flew back in. Her subsequent confrontation with the brutal Gen. Zia-ul-Haq cost her five years of her life, spent in prison. She seemed merely to disdain the experience, as she did the vicious little man who had inflicted it upon her.

R.I.P., Benazir Bhutto...