Brief Comments On Bhutto

A couple of weeks ago, I put together one of those casual lists of people with whom I'd most like to have dinner. Benazir Bhutto was on it. There's been some good commentary during the past few days about her life and death. But I think the images of her that will endure, appropriately, are those from the final few weeks of her life: high on a platform, unprotected (though as we know now, not unconcerned) in front of thousands of people in one of the most volatile nations on earth, or poking up through a car roof, waving passionately to supporters. She was, above all else, courageous. Quite a contrast to our own campaign trail these days, where blow-dried chest-thumping and courage via lapel flag-pin defines the candidates as well as their supporters. Bhutto certainly wasn't perfect, but she talked the talk and walked the walk in a part of the world where doing the latter, unfortunately, often gets you killed.

Meanwhile, my nominations for chutzpah-cum-desperation award of the month are here and here. Ready for another four (or eight) years in which these sorts of devastating indictments of an administration's foreign policy are spun as "reminders" of something we've apparently all forgotten?