this is the related aticle
This is weird, somehow.
Sullivan is talking about a debate that was set up by him as president of the Oxford Union which was canceled, but later set up by a subsequent president, who invited him to participate. Andrew's date was Benazir Bhutto.
People, of late, have been asking me what I think of Bhutto. I'm the only Pakistani my friends know, so I get to be the authority on all things Pakistani (and frequently, Muslim), which is great.
My response to one such query, over email, was thus:
She's a crook. No doubt about it at all, unfortunately.
While I was coming of age, she was a prominent political personage. Her father was a socialist who built a grassroots movement for the working/peasant class; he was democratically elected and proceeded to ruin the country economically. He was removed from power and later executed by General Zia-ul-Haq. His daughter rose to fame and political power on the anger and grief of a nation mourning for a cult figure (who was charismatic, but corrupt). She's been 'elected' twice (I think) and in her ample time in office, the only thing she's proven is that she knows how to raid the nation's coffers. She was dismissed for corruption (undoubted) by the president, to much celebration, and replaced by Nawaz Sharif, who was in turn "deposed" (again, to much celebration) by Musharraf. Or something. I lose track of the constant power shuffle between the same groups, punctuated by the military.
Because of her privileged upper class Harvard/Oxford background, she's able to work her propaganda very effectively on Western minds. Because of her father's spell on a certain faction in Pakistan, she's able to garner some populist support in Pakistan. But most Pakistanis know what she's all about and if there really were a fair election — if such a thing were even possible in Pakistan — I don't think she would win.
The sad fact of the matter is, it's impossible to expect Pakistani leaders to be honest and/or do things the democratic western way. Believe it or not, most educated Pakistanis are in favor of martial law because anything else is too weak to withstand the corruption that runs through ALL branches of the bureaucracy. If I were elected, I wouldn't be able to be honest or accomplish anything. If I didn't do what the entrenched ruling class (there is one) wanted me to do, I'd be assassinated in no time. Only a military leader has real clout and even a decent chance of withstanding pressures.
All I want to know about Musharraf is, he is keeping the fundamentalists from taking over the country and turning it into another Afghanistan or Iran. Benazir has no business returning after running away with the country's money and living it up in Dubai for however many years. Of course, it seems the reason she returned was because her recent deal with Musharraf allows her access to her Swiss bank accounts containing a cool $1.5 billion, and there's a chance she could return to political power. I guess she's bored after her long vacation.
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I read her autobiography when I was in my teens. I was hoping for something more in such a superficially inspiring female leader of my country. What I got was sheer cant.
Continuing the tradition of 'discrediting' Muslim/Paki woman by taking their clothes off, here's a picture of Benazir in a mini-skirt. Now that I've convinced all Pakis about her true inner evil, let's hope the west follows suit and is not mesmerized by her silver tongue.
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