kitchen table math, the sequel: in Pakistan

Friday, December 28, 2007

in Pakistan

John Moore, photographer, describes the day.

I'm going to show this to C.
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4 comments:

Liz Ditz said...

Thanks, CJ....I was ambivalent about BB, but her death is a tragedy in several dimensions.

December 28, 2007 at 5:13 PM
Catherine Johnson said...

Did you see BHL's op-ed in the WSJ today?

"a tragedy in several dimensions" is a good way of putting it -- I've been tongue-tied, trying to express this to myself...

I find myself in a state of "muted horror," if that makes sense

waiting for the other shoe to drop

December 29, 2007 at 7:54 AM
Catherine Johnson said...

They have killed a woman. A beautiful woman. A visible, indeed a conspicuously, spectacularly visible woman.

A woman who made a point not only of holding rallies in one of the world's most dangerous countries, but did so with her face uncovered, unveiled -- the exact opposite of the shameful, hidden women, the condemned creatures of Satan, who are the only women tolerated by these apostles of a world without women.

They killed a Jew, Daniel Pearl. They killed Ahmed Shah Massoud, the great guerilla leader against the Taliban, a moderate Muslim, a cultivated man and free spirit. They tried for years to kill a man, Salman Rushdie, who dared say that to be a man is also sometimes to choose your own destiny.

And now they have killed Benazir Bhutto -- killed her because she was a woman, because she had a woman's face, unadorned yet filled with an unswerving strength, because she was living out her destiny and refusing the curse that, according to the new fascists (the jihadists) floats over the human face of women. They killed this woman incarnation of hope, of spirit, of the will to democracy, not only in Pakistan, but in all the lands of Islam.

Pervez Musharraf has been a false adversary of al Qaeda. But if Benazir had won the election, if she had lived, she would certainly not have ceased to say, by dint of her mere presence, her being, her speaking out, that she was their resolute and absolute adversary, a hard-liner. For these men she was more than a political threat; she was an ontological threat. She would have been merciless. They knew it, and they killed her.


Ed liked this line:

For these men she was more than a political threat; she was an ontological threat.


I liked this passage:

The best, the most beautiful way of responding would have been for Angela Merkel, George Bush, Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy to have gone immediately to Pakistan for her funeral.

We should have seen, standing behind Benazir's body, as they once did behind Anwar Al-Sadat's and Itzhak Rabin's, the largest possible number of government leaders and heads of state, to make the funeral a global demonstration on behalf of the values of democracy and peace.

We would have wanted the French president to interrupt his vacation to bid farewell to this great lady, now a martyr, on her last voyage. But no. The man who just rolled out the red carpet for Moammar Gadhafi contented himself with a short communiqué, not responding to those who had begged him to find a gesture or at least words which would honor this assassinated heroine. Beyond Mr. Sarkozy, the entire community of democratic heads of state has been astonishingly moderate, prudent, indeed pusillanimous.

Grieving for Benazir

December 29, 2007 at 8:10 AM
concernedCTparent said...

I find myself in a state of "muted horror," if that makes sense

waiting for the other shoe to drop

Exactly so. It makes perfect sense and describes very much how I've been feeling about it. I just haven't been able to express it with words.

I feel burdened with an impending sense of doom.

December 29, 2007 at 8:13 AM

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