This isn't good news. Benazir Bhutto has been assassinated by a suicide bomber. I'm a little surprised that Musharraf himself has lasted this long, but I imagine he's pretty fanatical about security. I also hope that he has the bombs under control.

Pakistan is probably the most intractable problem we have right now, and in many ways is at the heart of the war. And the notion that "non-interventionalism" will make it go away is hopeless naive.

[Update a few minutes later]

Some thoughts from Michael Ledeen:

The freedom of women in the world—with the frightening prospect of the domination of men by women in any form, from the classroom to the ballot box—drives them around the bend. As she knew.

She was one of many women in the front lines of the war against the terror masters, and I often think that, after the American armed forces, brave women are indeed the greatest threat to our fanatical enemies. And they know it, which is why they killed her.

We can only hope that some good will come out of this. We need a "Peshawar awakening."

[Update at 10 AM CST]

Mark Steyn:

Since her last spell in power, Pakistan has changed, profoundly. Its sovereignty is meaningless in increasingly significant chunks of its territory, and, within the portions Musharraf is just about holding together, to an ever more radicalized generation of young Muslim men Miss Bhutto was entirely unacceptable as the leader of their nation. "Everyone’s an expert on Pakistan, a faraway country of which we know everything," I wrote last month. "It seems to me a certain humility is appropriate." The State Department geniuses thought they had it all figured out. They'd arranged a shotgun marriage between the Bhutto and Sharif factions as a "united" "democratic" "movement" and were pushing Musharraf to reach a deal with them. That's what diplomats do: They find guys in suits and get 'em round a table. But none of those representatives represents the rapidly evolving reality of Pakistan. Miss Bhutto could never have been a viable leader of a post-Musharraf settlement, and the delusion that she could have been sent her to her death. Earlier this year, I had an argument with an old (infidel) boyfriend of Benazir's, who swatted my concerns aside with the sweeping claim that "the whole of the western world" was behind her. On the streets of Islamabad, that and a dime'll get you a cup of coffee.

I've been dismayed since September 11th that the federal leviathan saw it as an opportunity to aggrandize itself and perpetuate its foreign-policy fantasies. My biggest disappointment with the Bush administration is that it didn't see this as an opportunity to clean house in both Foggy Bottom and the intelligence community, instead leaving the incompetent Tenet in charge (who should have been removed before the attacks), and letting the milquetoast Powell and the usual pin-stripers at State continue to run the transnationalist show. And if a Dem, any Dem, is elected next year, it will just go on.

And unfortunately, civil service rules are such that even the most fervent attempts at reform generally lose the battle with the bureaucrats.

[Update at 11 AM CST]

John Podhoretz writes about the American voters delusions about "holidays from history." The campaign so far has been amazingly unsubstantive and pathetic. Particular in the moderating of the clown-show "debates" by the media. I hope that this assassination will create an "Ottumwa" or "Manchester" awakening.

[Early afternoon update]

The idiotic reaction of Bill Richardson:

Democratic New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, called on President Bush to force Musharraf to step down. Until then, Richardson said the U.S. must suspend military aid to the Pakistani government.

"A leader has died, but democracy must live. The United States government cannot stand by and allow Pakistan's return to democracy to be derailed or delayed by violence," Richardson said.

And this is the Democrat with the best foreign policy credentials? As Captain Ed warns:

Richardson fortunately doesn't have a prayer of victory in the primaries. It's worth considering, however, that he will likely be a candidate for Secretary of State in any Democratic administration that wins in November 2008, if not a running mate on the ticket. Keep that in mind when thinking about whether to get involved in the next election.

Indeed.

[Update in the afternoon]

Blame America first. Mike Huckabee is apologizing. Not in my name.

And of course, he doesn't explain just what it is for which we should be asking forgiveness. But isn't it obvious that anything that goes wrong in the world is always our fault?

He really is the Republican Jimmy Carter.

[Update a few minutes later]

Unsurprisingly, Fred Thompson isn't apologizing. Unlike Huckabee, he seems to recognize that we're at war, and not against smokers and overweight people.

The only awakening I can imagine would be post nuclear holocaust. They've got warlords trying to maintain power against an insane death cult intent on destroying or enslaving the world, and both sides have access to the Bomb. This will not end well.

Rand, I don't understand why you think there would be a difference if a Republican was elected. Which Republican would be different? Rudy, for example, is running on his anti-terrorism credentials, but do you think he would clean house at the State Dept? I suppose Ron Paul would do things differently, but you wouldn't be happy with the result (I think).

I'm also not sure quite what you want -- if you were President, what would you do about Pakistan?

Looks like Pakistan might become the new "central front" in the war on al Qaeda.

Which Republican would be different?

Possibly Thompson or McCain. Certainly Ron Paul, though not in any useful way. ;-)

But as I said, it's a necessary, but not sufficient condition for an overhaul. The civil service rules are the biggest barrier to reform, and why it doesn't really matter that much who is in the White House.

There is a difference between the GOP and the Dems in terms of who would be working at the policy level. Richardson (or the likes of Sandy Berger) would likely have prominent positions in any Dem administration, and these are precisely the sort of people who need to be flushed out of the system (metaphor deliberately chosen) in the first place.

Judicious picks for senior (i.e. politically appointed) positions at State and the various Intellence positions wouldn't get rid of the dead wood, but those folks could be sidetracked into 'window seats', and made less destructive. Remember, the bureaucracy at State and the CIA is solidly Democratic, and it is very likely that any future Donk administration would pay close attention to their advice.

Now in fairness, unless you get an administration comitted to shaking things up (and realistically that leaves only Thompson and Guliani, McCain is deeply in bed with the State mafia), little will change. Any fight with the entrenched 'crats is going to be ugly and public, and only someone with a stomach for such a fight is going to get into it in the first place.

I'm not sure how the situation in Pakistan is support to be an indictment of the Foggy Bottom per se, as the none of the Bush Administration's current appointees for handling South East Asia actually have any experience in the area. I mean, they are not even trying (Karen Hughes and Jim Glassman's flailings distinctly don't count - the nation of Wasim Akram and Imran Khan was not impressed by your Cal Ripken Jr.).

That being said, the world would be a safer place with 25 K more troops in Afghanistan over the last five years rather than 150 K further west. Opportunity lost. Drama won, I guess. If this is a "war", it was decided at Tora Bora when Rumsfeld took his eye off the ball.

The problem with the "Afghanistan first" argument is that it is pushed by folks who would be arguing for withdrawl from Afghanistan if we weren't in Iraq.

No one believes that the US can use Afghanistan as a jumping off point for dealing with Pakistan. None of the Afghanistan first folks would support ANY military action in Pakistan, so it's absurd to argue that Afghanistan first would help with Pakistan.

The notion that there was EVER an option on the table of comitting 25,000 more troops to Afghanistan after the Taliban fell is nonsense, pure and simple. Instead, the explicit American policy from the very beginning was to minimize our footprint there, and engage NATO troops to keep things as multilateral as possible. We see how well that worked.

Andy's comment is very well taken. The only people who are pushing the 'we should have finished things up in Afghanistan first' line were those who would have opposed putting the troops there in the first place...all of this is merely a convenient club with which to beat the current administration. The problems in Afghanistan are manifold, and many of them defy simple solutions, but to suggest that had things gone better at Tora Bora everything would be alright is to ignore the host of other difficulties that beset the endeavour. Certainly it seems a bit convenient to simply blame Rumsfeld for all of the disappointments of the world (I had no idea he was so powerful....let me guess, he is behind global warming too?) and ignore the administration's idiotic export of the drug war to Afghanistan, for instance.

As for Iraq, these are different theatres in the same war, and the idea that they must be 'wrapped up' sequentially betrays an incredible ignorance regarding the way that wars are prosecuted. Should we have 'wrapped up' the Pacific before turning to Nazi Germany in WWII? (Godwin forgive me...)

Regarding the culpability of Foggy Bottom in all of this, the fact that Bush's appointees have been inexperienced politicos shocks me! My gosh, just think of how devastatingly it would be if other presidents had made this mistake! Fortunately though, most of the actual implementation of the policy is being run by the 'old hands' at State and the CIA, and of course we know how solid and reliable they are.

(Sarcasm off now)

I can't add much to what Scott wrote, except to suggest that people who latch on to today's troubles to assert that everything would have gone OK if only we had zigged instead of zagged, last year or the year before, are idiots. Hindsight can't answer the only question that matters, which is what to do next. It may be that there is nothing productive that we can do now. Certainly there is no obvious or easy course of action.

Perhaps this is how August 1914 would have looked had TV and the Internet existed then. I hope things end better this time.

It's very early to be saying this, but I can see some unpleasant possibilities. Pakistan is now pretty well in a state of civil war. The Al Qaeda/Taliban style nutcases may well win - and if that happens there will very likely be an escalation of the troubles in Kashmir - which India will not tolerate. It's a tribute to Hindu forbearance that they haven't gone to war with Pakistan over their provocations in Kashmir already.

And if there is a war between Hindu India and fundamentalist looney Islamic Pakistan, then the nukes will fly. 2008 may well see the world's first nuclear war. Happy New Year!

(Yes, I do know about Japan in 1945. Two bombs do not a war make, and only one side had the things - then.)

The problem with the "Afghanistan first" argument is that it is pushed by folks who would be arguing for withdrawl from Afghanistan if we weren't in Iraq.
The only people who are pushing the 'we should have finished things up in Afghanistan first' line were those who would have opposed putting the troops there in the first place...all of this is merely a convenient club with which to beat the current administration.
Ad hominem, factually incorrect BS pure and simple. And every administration deserves clubbing, the more convenient the clubs the better.

And the point was not to use Afghanistan as some jumping off point to Pakistan in some idiotic game of Risk - it was to sure up at least one of Pakistan's flanks, and keep the Northwest territories a local problem while things ripened under a nervous Musharraf.

And Scott, it's
We should have finished things up in Afghanistan. No "first".

Hindsight can't answer the only question that matters, which is what to do next. Tell that to those who have spent the last five years whining about Jamie Gorlick, the Cole and off target Tomahwks. Or the last twenty years about how CBS lost Tet.
Seriously, though, hindsight can inform - especially on whose judgement to trust. Right now the evidence is that the U.S.'s Pakistan policy is not being run by State or the CIA but by that fourth branch of government, the OVP.

John Bolton's opinion:

John Bolton, former US ambassador to the United Nations, said it was a mistake to collaborate with Bhutto's "desire to get back into the game in Pakistan" and view her as an alternative to the country's current leader, Pervez Musharraf.

"We in effect helped -- helped -- precipitate this dynamic that led to her tragic assassination," Bolton said Thursday on Fox News' Hannity & Colmes. "It's hard to see how that was the road to success."

Gosh, is John Bolton saying it was our fault?

Well, Bhutto and Musharraf were walking a delicate line between too much security (as when Bhutto complained about her house arrest, which Musharraf's representative said was for security reasons) and too little (as when she was assassinated). Unless Musharraf was somehow a conspirator in the assassination, I don't see how he's to blame for Bhutto's vacillation on how much security to give her.