Left Flank

FP Passport's Blake Hounshell seems to endorse Matthew Yglesias' argument that the US has no justification for criticizing the Pakistan People's Party for anointing former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's son, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari as its titular leader, because "...the odds of us going Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton in the White House look pretty good..." It's like marking a liberal bona fide, where good intellectuals just don't throw rocks while living in glass houses. But, it's really ultimately a a bad analogy that justifies propping up a dictator.

However, Joshua Hammer and Michael Hirsch can both joke about the Clinton-Bush feud, AND more pertinently point out that General Pervez Musharraf kept a lid on democratization. The medievalism of the PPP might be manifest, but Musharraf played a more corrosive role by not allowing democratic alternatives to appear, mostly notably when he ousted Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry.

America is not Pakistan: President Bush and Bill Clinton do not jail and exile political opponents.

Juan Cole, reporting on the Palistan People's Party's decision to run Makhdum Amin Fahim for prime minister on January 8th, takes a good swipe ridiculing the party of feudalism the PPP is determined to remain.

The PPP during the past two decades has been internally split between a rising middle class urban leadership and the old landowning families. An alternative to Fahim would have been the smart Punjabi lawyer, Aitzaz Ahsan, who was jailed for protesting the dismissal of the justices, and is admired by a lot of the urban activists. Despite Benazir's own education abroad, her instincts (and now those of her widower) was always to "run the feudals," and to depend on the landlords' ability to get out the vote among their own (largely illiterate and repressed) peasants.

The PPP leadership had a chance to become the party of the future and to galvanize the new middle class, which has spearheaded the challenge to Musharraf over his gutting of the judiciary. It has instead run the feudals again. Fahim seems to me unlikely to generate the sort of excitement that Aitzaz Ahsan would have. But then, the PPP will probably get a big sympathy vote. Once in power, however, unless it pursues policies that benefit urban classes, it will find itself eclipsed.

So, Pakistan=Fief, People=Lord, Party=Clan?

Huma Yusuf reminisces about Bhutto's "Kennedy" affect on affluent Pakistani women. I mention "JFK" because Yusuf's adolescent recollections remind me of my mother talking about her enthusiasm for JFK in 1960, a sentiment she has not recaptured since. I think Yusuf's essay works more for what it says about her "people" in Pakistan than for anything useful about Benazir Bhutto. She does bring up the issue of Ms. Bhutto's role in her brother's death also. It helps to keep supporters honest as feminists try to claim a Bhutto legacy.

Too young to understand the dynastic politics that spurred her career, I saw in Benazir a vision of femininity that had yet to materialize in the world around me. She was a sister who outshone her brothers by carrying forth her father's legacy; a daughter of privilege who knew the travails of solitary confinement; a woman who deigned to marry only after she was confident that her career would not stall; a young bride who kept her last name; a mother who did not let pregnancy get in the way of politics; a Harvard and Oxford graduate who could move with ease amongst the throng of truckers, farmers, and day laborers who attended Pakistan Peoples Party rallies.

The fact that Benazir happily assumed the responsibility of inspiring millions of women still recovering from General Zia-ul Haq's rigid and repressive regime became apparent to me when she presided over my high school's annual athletics meet in 1990. All the young girls who had won races earned a wink, a warm hug, or had words of wisdom whispered in their ears. To this day, I regret not having run a wee bit faster.

Over the years, though, I have found my enthusiasm for Benazir slowing down. Her charisma suffered, owing to well-circulated jokes about conjugal visits during her husband Asif Zardari's eight-year imprisonment. She disappointed Pakistani women when she failed to repeal the Draconian Hudood and Zina Ordinances that continue to curtail the rights of Pakistani women, especially those who have been raped. Her glamorous visage - well-cut shirts, stark-white scarves, a slick of red lipstick - had been supplanted by images of gore from Mir Murtaza's death, violent political clashes in Karachi, and, of course, her own untimely demise in Rawalpindi.

We all grow older.