Bhutto Did Not Trust President Bush
Posted on January 1, 2008 - Filed Under Bhutto, Bush, Pakistan |
It is now becoming abundantly clear that Benazir Bhutto did not trust President Bush nor anyone in his inner circle.
On Tuesday we learned that Bhutto and her party had obtained information that suggested the Pakistani Intelligence Agency was planning to fix the election in favor of President Pervez Musharraf. It is well-known that the military is the base of support for Musharraf.
So why would Bhutto feel uncomfortable with the Bush White House? Maybe it has something to do with President Bush proclaiming Pervez Musharraf is ‘our guy.’ Meanwhile under the watch of ‘our guy’ Pakistan remains one of the most dangerous spots in the world, still filled with Islamic militants. An October, 2007 Newsweek article proclaimed, “Islamic militants have spread beyond their tribal bases, and have the run of an unstable, nuclear-armed nation.”
What has ‘our guy’ done for US interests in Pakistan? Has he secured his boarders from terrorists? No. Has he wisely spent the billions of dollars in aid we gave him (at last count 10 billion) to find Osama Bin Laden and eliminate extremists from Pakistan? No. If not, why does President Bush back him? The question becomes especially dubious when we consider this fact about Benazir Bhutto - She was an enemy of Osama Bin Laden.
Paul Cruichshank of the Guardian notes, “Bin Laden has plotted against Bhutto since she first became prime minister of Pakistan. In the fall of 1989, in the lead up to a crunch no-confidence vote in Pakistan’s parliament, Bin Laden, based then in Peshawar, tried to sway the outcome by sending money to Islamabad to buy votes. According to testimony in Peter Bergen’s 2006 oral history The Osama bin Laden I know, Bhutto, on discovering Bin Laden’s involvement, personally phoned up King Fahd of Saudi Arabia and demanded the Saudis rein him in. The Saudis called Bin Laden back for consultations and promptly confiscated his passport, cutting him off for a while from the al-Qaida organization he had founded in Pakistan the year before. The episode presumably did not endear Bhutto to Bin Laden.
In the fall of 1993 Ramzi Youssef, a jihadist terrorist who had trained in al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan and who had just fled to Karachi from New York after orchestrating a bomb attack on the World Trade Center, plotted to kill Bhutto.”
Instead of helping Bhutto restore democracy to Pakistan, secure the country from terrorism, and create a more viable relationship with the West, the Bush White House ignored her staff pleas for greater security protection, ignored the abuses of power by President Musharraf, and ignored the opportunity to help insight real reform in the region. After playing a central role in brokering the deal that allowed her to return to Pakistan the Bush Administration dropped the ball and left the field. The only problem was the game was not over.
The Bush Administration missed out on more than the politics of Ms. Bhutto. It missed out on a chance to further US interests in the region and to leave some sort of legacy of change. Instead we have chaos, upheaval, and yes, we have ‘our guy.’
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Bush should be ashamed…but that would require him to have shame so then um nevermind.