If the commentary spewed today about the murder of Benazir Bhutto was loaded onto a freight train, you'd be stopped at the signal for SIX hours watching it trundle by. God knows I have. All in all a numbing exegesis of the obvious.
But if you want to get it all in one penetrating bit of analysis, you'd be reading Unqualified Reservations: Benazir Bhutto: mob hit in Pakistan
You are on notice by the second graph,
"Memo to Washington: this is what happens when you let the Times run your foreign policy."
From that point on you'll see the power dynamics of Pakistan more lucidly than a 15 day "Pity-Poor-Pakistan" telethon:
Political power in Pakistan is shared among a huge variety of parties, gangs, cliques, alliances, mafias, liberation fronts, Islamic sects, human-rights groups, military units, and the like. All of them have one goal: to maximize their capture of the economic production of the Indus River basin. You may think of this area as a shithole, and it would be going too far to say that you are utterly wrong, but it is also a traditionally prosperous and influential region.
Then a brief tour of the three factions that are contesting ownership of this little plum followed by a brief estimate of the Bush/Washington/ Times axis and hand in the whole sorry mess.
And wrapping up with a tip-toe through the Times tulips that brought this all about.
All in all, a tour de force from an unusually gifted mind. Recommended: HERE.
Posted by Vanderleun at December 28, 2007 12:22 AM | TrackBack"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." -- Karl Popper N.B.: Comments are moderated to combat spam and may not appear immediately. Comments that exceed the obscenity or stupidity limits will be either edited or expunged.