Let's suppose Joe R. Blogger writes a wonderful post. It gets linked to. Later on, it's discovered that that Joe is a major-league douche in matters completely unrelated to the subject matter of the wonderful post.

On the one hand, one can argue that one does not want to support Joe because he's a douche. Linking is a form of support and therefore, the link should be removed.

On the other hand, the post is still wonderful... this blog is about wonderful things, so, regardless of Joe's douchiness, the readers of the blog want to read this stuff. For all that Dante was an asshole, we still care about the wonderful things he wrote...

Back when Bhutto first returned to Pakistan, I wondered why she came back. Back then, I figured we'd never know... she could have come back hoping to be a martyr, to accumulate power or to be a thorn in Musharaf's side. Now she's dead and I guess I was right back then... we'll never know. But we are entitled to our suspicions.

Bhutto was a woman of many contradictions. Well, actually, she wasn't. She was very much sadly typical of Pakistani politicians. Nepotic, prone to cronyism, she was booted out of government for corruption. This wasn't as extreme as her successor, who got exiled after a military coup due to corruption, but it was still pretty bad. But, as I said, this was typical. Pakistan has an inordinate number of prime ministers for so young a democracy.

As for who was responsible, hah... you're looking at a veritable game of Clue here. Sharif hated Bhutto. Musharaf also wasn't exactly hot on Bhutto, relations having taken a sharp downturn after the suspension of the constitution; an assassination of a popular politician would make a great excuse for the declaration of another state of emergency. The military also disliked Bhutto ecause she didn't like nukes. To the Taliban and al Qaeda, Bhutto was anathaema and her assassination as we all know would be great for sowing chaos in the region, which is what both these rabble rousers want so either one could have been responsible too. So there are a great many parties who benefit from the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

Who are the losers? The ordinary schmoes of the world. Especially the ordinary schmoes who live in Pakistan and environs. Regardless of who was responsible, we know that tensions are going to be raised, planted operatives are going to be instigating riots and there may be another state of emergency in Pakistan... maybe martial law even. Doesn't sound to me like the world's a safer place for folks at large.

Right now, the talking point going around is that "The People of Pakistan must now decide what kind of country they want... there is very little that the West can do." This is fundamentally untrue... the People of Pakistan will by and large be able to do squat about what kind of country they want. They are caught up something beyond their control and now, as has been happening too often, all they can do is stand back and watch where the dice fall and try to rebuild from there. And the punchline is that there isn't anything that the world at large can do either because they have so squandered their diplomatic resources over the past 7 years.

The day Benazir Bhutto died will be marked at a watershed moment in the history of South Asia, if not the world at large. Many cynics, myself included, harboured strong suspicions as to Bhutto's motives when she returned to Pakistan; we thought she wanted to seal her legacy, get her name writ large in the history books for surely 2007 was a momentous year in the history of Pakistan.

And now, she has indeed secured her place in that history. I hope she is happy now, wherever she is.