Another Casualty Of The War On Terror

Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto Assassinated

The former prime minister was murdered by an attacker who shot her in the neck and chest after a campaign rally and then blew himself up. Her death stoked new chaos across the nuclear-armed nation, an important U.S. ally in the war on terrorism.

For those who still do not believe we are at war, please wake up. Our enemy is real and their goal is our destruction. They will continue to kill and destroy and terrorize until we stop them.

Updates

From Tammy Bruce:

Bhutto was a Muslim woman who was committed to democracy. She repeatedly stated that Islam was her religion, not her government. She believed completely it he separation of church (mosque) and state. And she had massive support in Pakistan. A woman who exemplified the fact that not all Muslims are fundamentalist maniacs. Islamist obsession with murdering her also reveals exactly how fragile the al-Qaida/Taliban death Cult really is. At the same time, this opens the door to a civil war in Pakistan. Another situation which makes us have to seriously think about who we want in the White House for the next 4 years. And whether or not President Bush has the cajones to aggressively deal with Islamists if they attempt to gain control of Paki nukes. Frankly, right this minute I'd be more comfortable with Giuliani in the White House instead of Bush.

From Mark Steyn:

Benazir Bhutto's return to Pakistan had a mad recklessness about it which give today's events a horrible inevitability. [...]

Since her last spell in power, Pakistan has changed, profoundly. Its sovereignty is meaningless in increasingly significant chunks of its territory, and, within the portions Musharraf is just about holding together, to an ever more radicalized generation of young Muslim men Miss Bhutto was entirely unacceptable as the leader of their nation. [...]

...she was everything we in the west would like a Muslim leader to be. We should be modest enough to acknowledge when reality conflicts with our illusions. Rest in peace, Benazir.

From Jihad Watch:

Calling Benazir Bhutto a moderate Muslim is one manifestation of what's wrong with the term, and how confusing and misleading it can be. Benazir Bhutto was indeed a Muslim, at least nominally, but when she was in power in Pakistan what she championed was a Western secularist, socialist vision, not an Islamic one by any stretch of the imagination. She did not, in other words, offer an alternative vision of Islam itself, shorn of its draconian and supremacist elements. She didn't offer or stand for an alternative understanding of the Qur'an and Sunnah that taught that Muslims should not wage war for Islam, subjugate unbelievers, or institute stoning and amputation and the rest. Rather, she essentially advocated that in some areas Islamic law should be set aside. That, along with her gender, is what aroused the ire of the Islamic leaders in Pakistan against her, as it has against Musharraf.

So is a moderate Muslim, or someone who presents a moderate face of Islam, simply one who stands for less Islam, particularly in the political sphere? Maybe. But most of the people in the West who use the term "moderate Muslim" imagine that it refers to those who advocate not less Islam but a different Islam -- and indeed, one that is more authentic than the jihadists' version. Many of those who refer to the need to support moderate Muslims imagine that there is a version of Islam that is simultaneously traditional and peaceful, that deserves our support against the radicals.

That Islam, unfortunately, does not exist, and assuming that it does exist has led policymakers and law enforcement officials to numerous errors in many fields. And Benazir Bhutto did not represent such an Islam. She certainly supported the Taliban in Afghanistan, but that was a matter of calculation, not conviction -- and in any case would hardly be evidence of moderation in anything. She was, in the precise and encompassing words of Andrew McCarthy, "an attractive, American-educated socialist whose prominent family made common cause with Soviets and whose tenures were rife with corruption."

In the coming tumultuous days and weeks, it would be wiser for analysts and government officials to remember her that way than as a champion of a chimerical and elusive moderate Islam.