Criminal Profiling Topic of the Day: The Assassination of Benazir Bhutto
It has been a while since any news item has brought me to tears, but today we have lost a great world leader to Islamic extremists and terrorism. Benazir Bhutto, ex prime minister of Pakistan and first female leader of an Islamic nation, was assassinated today during a campaign rally in Rawalpindi,leaving the best hope for democracy and reasonable thinking dead in Pakistan. Bhutto represented the kind of idealism, courage, and commitment we in the United States rarely see in our own leaders and citizens. Bhutto returned to Pakistan fully aware of the danger awaiting her and she was willing, for the sake of her people and the ideals of a democratic society, to put her life on the line.
Benazir Bhutto did not lead a life free of controversy and one cannot claim she was a perfect leader, but she offered the best hope for common sense and decency in a part of the world plagued by terrorism and oppressive mindsets. Peace, fair elections, democracy, equality for women - all of these concepts have been trampled on today and I cannot help but feel the whole world will suffer because of this horrific act of hostility against a woman who sought to make her country and the world a better place to live in.
May the people of Pakistan come out of this tragedy with a combined strength to fight back against extremism and not let the loss of Benazir Bhutto be the death knell of all freedom and decency, inshallah.
Criminal Profiler Pat Brown
Benazir Bhutto did not lead a life free of controversy and one cannot claim she was a perfect leader, but she offered the best hope for common sense and decency in a part of the world plagued by terrorism and oppressive mindsets. Peace, fair elections, democracy, equality for women - all of these concepts have been trampled on today and I cannot help but feel the whole world will suffer because of this horrific act of hostility against a woman who sought to make her country and the world a better place to live in.
May the people of Pakistan come out of this tragedy with a combined strength to fight back against extremism and not let the loss of Benazir Bhutto be the death knell of all freedom and decency, inshallah.
Criminal Profiler Pat Brown
7 comments:
I share your sadness, Pat. A true tragedy for Pakistan and the world.
My son is leaving for India next week to spend a year in Chennai at the University of Madras. In the last year or two in India, bombs have blown up on trains in Mumbai and in the marketplaces in Hyderabad and New Delhi. Terrorism is not a rare thing in Pakistan or India as it is in the United States and people in those countries live with the reality that their city can be the target of the next attack. I worry for my son's safety as he finishes school in India but I know that we cannot simply hide ourselves from what is happening in the world. I will be returning to India myself this spring for a visit to my son and to see Indian friends. My son had also wanted to visit Pakistan when I came but obviously this year will not be a wise time to make such travel to that country.
Irrational fundementalism is such a terrible blight on the world and my heart goes out to all those who have to live with it in their midst.
Let's not romanticise Bhutto as a champion of Western virtue. It was Bhutto who recognized the Taliban government as legitimate, one of only 3 countries to do so, and her time as prime minister was marked by rampant corruption and the myterious deaths of two of her siblings.
She's suspected of both. I think she would have made good on her promise to fight Al-Qaeda, which means we lost a valuble ally, but she's hardly the Thatcher of Pakistan, more like the Queen Boudicca.
But a Boudicca is exactly what we needed.
I agree that Bhutto was a politician to the core and the issues of corruption surrounding her and her family are concerns. However, one must spend time in certain countries to understand the complexities of the systems of politics to evaluate the worth of the leaders within it. Let's face it, all politicians make it to the top because they are able to work within the system or a part of the system which will support their rise to the top. Totally honest and unselfish folks are rarely, if ever, a part of that group.
Bhutto represented a level of modernity and forward movement that was a necessity for Pakistan and the world and it is a blow to lose Bhutto to those forces which wish to squash freedom and equality in that country and in the world.
Gostei muito desse post e seu blog é muito interessante, vou passar por aqui sempre =) Depois dá uma passada lá no meu site, que é sobre o CresceNet, espero que goste. O endereço dele é http://www.provedorcrescenet.com . Um abraço.
i usually read with pleasure your intelligent comments & deductions in the mccanns case, etc.
that's why i'm surprised with your simplistic explanation of bhuttto's assassination. I can't believe you can only see islamic terrorism as a hypothesis in this case: don't you see it's too simple?
hope not to have offended you with the way i express myself in your language.
Angel Lizarra.
You haven't posted in a while. I hope all is well :)
Post a Comment