Bhutto Mysteries

By Alan Caruba

By now there have been at least three different stories regarding the assassination, the last being the official government version that she bumped her head on some part of the van and that was what really killed here. Now, that is so absurd that only the chairman of the Committee to Re-Elect Pervez Musharraf is going to believe it. It was either a bullet, a bomb or a combination of both.

Who killed her? Well, the Islamo-fascists in Pakistan have been saying they wanted her dead for a long time and there was a recent previous effort when one of their bombs killed 140 or so people when she returned to her native land. When jihadists say they killed her, I am inclined to believe them.

The real mystery will always be Benazir Bhutto who seemed driven to clear the name of her father who was executed by one of the long line of dictators that ran the nation. He had been prime minister. She had been, too. Twice. Both times charges of corruption were leveled against here--generally believed to be false--and the second time she had to get out of Dodge to avoid being thrown in jail. She had already spent a few years in a Pakistani jail and leaving made a lot of sense. She was later cleared.

Why, though, return? Why as a Harvard and Oxford educated woman would she submit to an arranged marriage because it was "the Muslim thing to do"? Why return when she had three children that would surely be left motherless? Why do so when Pakistan is home to some of the most rabid jihadists to be found anywhere?

I wonder, too, about the full role in this tragedy that the U.S. may have played? Reportedly the State Department put a lot of pressure on Musharraf to let her return and run for office. Was the U.S. picking up the tab for her return and campaign? Did State think Bhutto would crack down on the Islamo-crazies more than Musharraf? We will never know.

Bhutto will remain in many ways a mystery, but now it is time for reality and fable to mix. She will became a lessor diety than Gandhi, but she is right up there in that pantheon.

That's the problem of being saintly. It tends to get you killed.