Home Who Mourns for Bhutto - Democracy's Dead End
Home Who Mourns for Bhutto - Democracy's Dead End

Who Mourns for Bhutto - Democracy's Dead End

Bhutto's return and her assassination has once again dredged up the question of democracy in the third world. Her assassination though should be a reminder yet again that politics is played by different rules outside the West. Bhutto was no martyr or saint, she was the daughter of a man who though "democratically" elected had authorized the execution of a political opponent. Bhutto herself has been accused of numerous murders and ethnic cleansing, including the murder of her own brother by her niece. If Musharraf did indeed order the death of Bhutto or at least turn a blind eye to it, he would have acted no differently than Bhutto herself had.

With Bhutto, Americans embraced not a record but a message, the articulate Oxford educated tone of a woman whose rhetoric was Westernized but her approach was the usual Third World combination of kleptocracy, brutality and deceit. Beginning with her father Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan sponsored Islamic terrorism in Kashmir and supported terrorism in the Middle East, including Arafat. Bhutto's father groomed the fundamentalist Islamic general who would overthrow him and Bhutto groomed the Taliban who would provide a warm home to the Islamic terrorists who would eventually kill her.

While Bhutto was adept at delivering one message to the West, the reality was otherwise. Those mourning Bhutto's death as the murder of a woman by Islamists might do well to remember just how many women Bhutto had been responsible for killing, both in her failure to repeal the Hudood laws, which made rape prosecutions virtually impossible while making adultery prosecutions on behalf of those rapists absurdly easy, and her promotion of the Kashmiri Jihad, particularly against the Hindu Pandits of Kashmir.

In Bhutto's desire to seize Kashmir from India, Pakistan backed and trained Islamic terrorist groups who engaged in a brutal campaign of atrocities against the Pandit reminiscent of Sudan that all but eliminated their population. This campaign included murders, gang rapes, arson, kidnapping and torture. Rather than being some sort of patron saint of Democracy in Pakistan, Bhutto backed and armed Islamic fundamentalists in Kashir and Afghanistan, those same Jihadist thugs who committed numberless atrocities against women.

While Westerns remain eager to find sources of moderation and friends of democracy in Pakistan, the country is a boiling pot. Musharraf is simply the man with his hand on top of the pot trying to keep it from boiling over. Most of the third world does not consist of democracies, it consists of oligarchies and kleptocracies. Democracy in the third world is simply an unstable oligarchy.

The philosophical belief that all it takes to remedy a dictatorship is to give the people freedom and a chance to vote ignores the troubling result that such elections inevitably mirror the unstable hatreds and rivalries of the country itself. No ruler could stay in power unless he reflects the wills and wishes of a sizable portion of the population. That is a reality that we repeatedly ignore at our own peril because it forces us to acknowledge that these countries have cultures that substantially diverge in morals and preferences from our own.

The United States would not be a democracy unless Americans wished it so. If we were incapable of handling Democracy and backed radicals and settled disputes with guns and fists, we wouldn't have a democracy. If Pakistan's population really were ready for a democracy, they would have one. They instead have a system of government that accurately reflects their culture, it's an ugly truth but an inescapable one.

Democracy is the virtue of a culture, not something inherent in mankind. Elections become the Rorschach blot of a nation reflecting its values and its leaders, elected or unelected, reflect its deepest heart. Stalin was the Russian Father-God made flesh, a dread beloved tyrant by a nation of slaves. Hitler was the Burgher-agitator, the worst of Germany wearing sane clothing over its insane mad nakedness. Saddam was the Father-Sheikh, the ultimate tribal paternalistic figure doling out favors to his family and brutal death to his enemies.

To become a democracy takes more than a ballot box, it requires that a culture, a people and a nation become ready for democracy. Without first growing up, democracy in the third world runs into a dead end.

Comments

  1. Democracy, such as it is since it really appears no where on earth, but the form of government which fosters freedom and individualism is possible because of the nature of the people who live in that nation. It is the staunch individualism and deep seated biblical world view that allows America to be what it is along with a huge blessing from above.
    Now, with huge influxes of different kinds of people, those freedoms are being lost in America as well because they do not fit the profile that allows for this freedom nor do they share the deeply rooted Protestant work ethic.
    So, we move to socialism and a welfare society and an end to prosperity because of it.
    Those ethics are found in western Europe and America alone.
    There will never be good government in the east. They have neither Gd's blessings nor the ethics to pull it off.

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  2. Absolutely. Democracy is a virtue of our culture, and it reflects our values.

    Same to with most if not all Arab Muslim nations. Their cultures value only violence--homicide and suicide--which is leading them only into oblivion.

    Regarding Bhutto--inspite of everything I've read about her when I first heard of her assasination my reaction was one of horror.

    They killed a WOMAN. You read about honor killings all the time and yet this realization that they really killed a woman shocked me. I guess I'm childlike in that regard. I still expect women, children, the elderly to be under special protection, off limits.

    Deep inside I know the day will come when Hamas, Hizbollah, Al Quaeda, whatever airs a beheading video of an infant, some child or frail elderly person.

    I see it coming and am dreading it.

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  3. Bhutto realised later that she'd made a mistake with her past decisions and went a different direction.

    As for america and freedom. If we're still "free" in 10 years, it will be a miracle.

    Meanwhile, the little paranoid Jew is stocking up on 50 pound bags of wheat berries, soy beans, beans, rice, and scanning the hillside collecting mushrooms, herbs, roots, tree bark and nuts for the disaster to come. I call it, "Doing the Yosef!" :]

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  4. Anonymous31/12/07

    very scary, but likely much of what is said is true. The question is where to go with it. Should free nations support dictatorships? And, what kind, left or right?

    How should we view a Saddam versus a Stalin? What about Iran and their Mullahs?

    What does a culture that supports personal rights do in a world of so much evil? (Granted that even here there are different degrees of freedom.)

    PS you left out a very important example of Russia. In spite of being given some essential parts of freedom the culture has devolved back to a dictatorship. Even South Africa with a white influence culture is spinning out of control.

    So after being educated please offer so solutions.

    Even the Torah doesn't seem to support a western style of government. Maybe that is the answer.

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  5. we should certainly not support dictatorships on a long term basis,

    russia itself has indeed devolved back to tyranny, just as Kerensky's brief government was an aberration in the longer history of russia that was quickly sidelined by the communists

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  6. Anonymous1/1/08

    If we more or less agree with the issues does anyone have a practical approach to the problem?

    ReplyDelete

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