I Heard The News Today, Oh Boy....

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto is really not much of a surprise to me, I am sorry to say. But now that it is an accomplished fact and Pakistan is in turmoil we will have to monitor events there more closely than ever.

Andrew McCarthy has this to say:

"The transformation from Islamic society to true democracy is a long-term project. It would take decades if it can happen at all. Meanwhile, our obsessive insistence on popular referenda is naturally strengthening — and legitimizing — the people who are popular: the jihadists. Popular elections have not reformed Hamas in Gaza or Hezbollah in Lebanon. Neither will they reform a place (Pakistan) where Osama bin Laden wins popular opinion polls and where the would-be reformers are bombed and shot at until they die.

But we should at least stop fooling ourselves. Jihadists are not going to be wished away, rule-of-lawed into submission, or democratized out of existence. If you really want democracy and the rule of law in places like Pakistan, you need to kill the jihadists first. Or they’ll kill you, just like, today, they killed Benazir Bhutto."