Goodbye, Benazir Bhutto

I'm sure that thousands of blogs are written today upon the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Some will be lauditory; most will be anywhere from sad to frustrated to downright angry.

To me, Benazir was an incredible woman, superior in beauty and intelligence. She managed her fears like few can, and was willing to risk her life from the very moment she stepped into politics. Though I could never tell from official accounts, my gut always told me that she was demonized, threatened, and slapped with trumped-up charges by those who stood the most to lose from the truthful light she radiated. When they said her administration was rife with corruption it seemed an obvious example of projection.

When I heard that Benazir was assassinated this morning I was filled with a hopeless frustration. I've asked for years how we can stop those who cultivate hatred and employ violence without resorting to their tactics. These are the people too self-involved to recognize common humanity, too myopic to understand the common good, doubt their own potency too much so that they have to prove to others that they are strong, people who conquer anything but themselves. They live in pitiful, damnable fear. But they would rather kill the bearers of light rather than admit it.

If anybody questions why I have such a problem with the political and religious neoconservative movement in our nation it is for this very reason. When George Bush stood up this morning and said that Benazir's assassination was so horrible, I believed he really doesn't understand that his use of military violence has anything to do with the escalation of violence in the world. Then his intonation of the threat that we will 'bring them to justice' meant what it always means: we'll hunt them down, beat them up, and kill them. Revenge is justice. Allah will sort these people one day, but until then we have to live with them.

At what point do we finally say that enough is enough? We have the sophistication to test for pathological power-seeking in people. There is enough history to learn from and creativity in good people to find a way to restrain them and keep them from seizing power. The revolutions of human history have been in conquering conditions that make life hard or dangerous for us; the next revolution needs to be conquering ourselves.

Goodbye, Benazir Bhutto. In your memory may we continue your spirit and agenda, may we bear your courage, may we take you for inspiration though we no longer have your voice and vision.