Benazir Bhutto: An Appreciation

I've had a thing going for Benazir Bhutto ever since the long ago period when, like her, I was somewhat younger, and she was just coming onto the international scene, on the heels of her father, who had already suffered a violent, political death, by execution.

I suppose libido played a part in that admiration, as she was a true dazzler, especially for someone in the uglyfying business of politics. But this B. Bhutto thing wasn't sex on its usual levels. Instead it was the way that she constituted such an unusual and striking presence among all the baboon-butt male national leaders of that era as well as the ones sadly serving in the same roles today. Without having a good idea of just what her belief system was, I saw some possibilities, if the commonly accepted idea of physical beauty has any utility at all. I thought there was a good chance that --notwithstanding Margaret Thatcher -- Ms Bhutto, simply because she was a woman and an extremely classy-looking one at that, might be able to influence her nondescript male reprobate colleagues and adversaries on the national and international levels enough that at least some would start behaving in more benign and constructive ways.

And indeed she did serve for several years as the very unlikely leader of a populous country in a world in which so many women live out their lives squashed up against a wall, no matter what distinguished Muslim professorial apologists might say. But more predictably she was driven from office and ended up living in exile, until just a few short weeks ago.

And now, here she is, or was, following the equally tragic and surprising example of another female leader, Indira Gandhi, who, living in that same sort of world, likewise followed in her father's footsteps by becoming chief executive of India, that overloaded, neighbor country to which Pakistan is inextricably handcuffed like a set of forever snarling "Defiant Ones," and was subsequently also assassinated. Today Benazir Bhutto has been taken away from here by bomb and gun, wielded by true criminals whose evil natures prevented them from having any idea of how much -- more than Pakistan -- that whole region and maybe even the world has always needed the likes of her.