Bhutto killed

So how do you think this will affect the presidential contest? Can we finally get them to stop talking about who is cutting whose grass, and try to engage the voters about something of substance?

Well ... if all of the previous wars and assassinations of various government leaders, plus issues like poverty, crime, and a trillions-of-dollars deficit -- not to mention an attack on our own country in 2001 -- if those things have not gotten them to stop arguing about the grass and engaging the voters with something of substance ... then I do not think that the death of one former minister in Pakistan is going to achieve it.

Sorry to sound so cynical! :-/ I'm just not sure it will make a lot of difference. But I could very well be wrong.

i think it will impact the presidential contest negatively in the short run, particularly on the republican side. parasitical use of tragedies in other nations for political gain here (in the USA) is distasteful and also corrupts public discussion of important world matters.

i would prefer a discussion of unaccounted for funds sent to pakistan (not to mention a rational cost-benefit analysis of the billions already spent in iraq and afghanistan) to take place rather than what i suspect will be a fear-mongering evocation of 9/11 in the next few days.

fear-mongering evocation of 9/11 in the next few days

theoria, Mitt Romney has already gotten started. I wonder if anyone else has (I've turned off CNN for the day.)

What will happen next in Pakistan?

i think the impact on the november '08 election will be huge, but our reaction to what's about to happen in Palistan will be muffled, delayed, and pushed aside as best as we can until the effect of pakistan's military fighting amongst itself takes them off their borders and leqves us facing a larger enemy both in Iraq and Afghanistan. Additionally, I think the military will be able to deflect the change in the war, keeping us in the dark until large sections of both countries explode even more than they are exploding now.
at that point, we'll have 2 twiddle-dees that will both rattle their empty swords and the people will elect the one that farts loudest.

not that i'm cynical. it just seems to end up this way whenever we rely on a military junta to keep his country from hating us.

Theoria sayz, ". . . and also corrupts public discussion of important world matters."

Did I miss something? When? Where? C-SPAN hasn't shown a politician discussing important world matters, in a serious, no-holds-barred way in a while. CNN, FoxNEWS, MSNBC, the nightly news, the newspaper? These are all part of the misinformation machine.

The only place discussion of important world matters takes place is in the partisan press and the internets.

Political campaigns will never be the place for serious political discussion, as all discussion and debate there is subordinated to winning votes, not winning minds.

The serious discussion must take place in forums like these, and we must then try in various ways to influence the decision-makers.

In any case, since the United States does not now have an agreed approach to Third World problems, including the problem of radical Islam, an event like this is not going to clarify anything.

The real question is: what should our underlying long-term approach to Pakistan be? Should we be supporting modernizers like the late Bhutto, or supporting hard-nosed military dictators like the current one, as I was disappointed to see John Bolton advocate? I personally support the former approach -- but there is no consensus, not even within the Right or the Left, much less between them.

One by one, country by country, the lights are going out all over the Middle East.

What's the story on her hitting her head on the lever? Was she yanked back in so quickly that it killed her? Anyone seen an explanation?

It must have been the force of the blast itself. One of her aides is calling foul, but... there is no reason for Musharraf to play down the existence of bullet or shrapnel wounds as a mutual foe has been identified as the culprit.

An excerpt from the second link:

"Authorities have a taped conversation of the Taliban leader, Baitullah Mehsud, in which he congratulates a friend for Bhutto's death, Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema told reporters today. ``Very brave boys'' took part in the assault, Mehsud said, according to a government transcript of the tape."

Sigh. I only found out about this Friday night, looking at the newspapers in the newsstand at our train station (came home from spending Christmas days with family and without TV, and didn't pick up yesterday's paper at the family home).
I feel I have to agree with geneg in #8...

What I'm gathering from CNN.com is that if she was killed 'by accident' and not directly by the sniper/bomb blast, Islam will not honor her as a martyr, no matter if the assasination attempt was the cause of the accident happeniing. It's hair splitting that I don't quite understand, but apparently a serious hair.

The People's Party is now effectively the Bhutto Party. It's enough to make one think that we're talking about Bangladesh...

She was a feudal leader and the Leader for Life of her party. Democratic norms in Pakistan are very feeble, but however feeble they are, we must nourish them. At the same time, we have to work with the people who have the guns. Glad I'm not in charge of figuring out how to combine those two things.

An interesting remark to come out of this whole incident was Bhutto's son after being appointed head of party (nepotism) was to remark that democracy is a good thing and the best revenge (or some such).

Sounds very American, doesn't it?

I wouldn't characterize nepotism as a core problem with American democracy, would you? Yes, we've had two Adamses, two Bushes and so forth--and we may have two Clintons--but each has earned their position to a significant extent. Further, the power tends to be fairly restricted to certain individuals within a family and not to extend past politics. That is, the Kennedy's don't control all the land in Massachusetts or use legislative power to control monopoly industries, or whatever.

Contrast what you have in Pakistan or India. Bhutto's family's has substantial non-political power and uses its political power for all sorts of corruption and graft. And dynasties are much longer, and much more about the dynasty than any inherent ability. Bhutto's party just elevated her teenage son to power; or take the Indian example, nicely summarized on Wikipedia, where the dynasties are longer

Motilal Nehru->Jawaharlal Nehru->Indira Gandhi->Sanjay Gandhi==Rajiv Gandhi->Sonia Gandhi->Rahul Gandhi

Put this in American terms: Bush, sr. is succeeded by his son, then by Laura Bush, then by a Bush son who just wanted to fly airplanes and had no political experience, then by the Italian wife of that fellow, then by her son, etc.

You are absolutely correct. The Kennedy's do not control all the land in Massachusetts.