“America is a symbol of what can be to millions of oppressed people all over the world…America symbolizes modernity, diversity and democracy, and it is these three things which are the fanatics’ worst fears.”
Benazir Bhutto, former Prime Minister of Pakistan, said this on Hillsdale’s campus during a 2002 CCA. The “fanatics” were radical Muslims. A Muslim herself, Bhutto made it her mission to challenge the corrupt military regime in Pakistan, only the latest manifestation of Pakistan’s tumultuous history of political assassinations and military coups.
Five years later, Bhutto returned to her home country, following a nine-year, self-imposed political exile, to campaign for the 2008 general election. On December 27th, 2007, as Bhutto waved goodbye to her enthusiastic supporters after a rousing campaign speech, two gunshots rang out, followed by an explosion.
The prime minister had been assassinated.
“Getting Away With Murder: Benazir Bhutto’s Assassination and the Politics of Pakistan” by Heraldo Muñoz recounts the U.N. investigation of Bhutto’s death. As the lead commissioner of the investigation, Muñoz also traces Pakistan’s complicated political history since its independence from Britain in 1947, as well as U.S. involvement in Pakistan since then.
Current events in the Middle East, such as Syrian civil war and the winding down of American engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan, make this a good time to think about America’s role in today’s world.
Perhaps Muñoz’s work can help Americans think more clearly about that question. Although the book primarily presents a factual account, a sobering story nonetheless results. With little commentary, Muñoz presents individual pieces that form a puzzle of disturbing corruption, with unsettling instances of U.S. involvement. Muñoz shows that deep-seated strife and animosity perpetuated by a rule of man, not of law, and frequent assassinations characterize Pakistan’s political heritage.
In Muñoz’s telling, the history of U.S. involvement in Pakistan involves confusing and dubious support of tomorrow’s enemies for intel on today’s. The Reagan administration, for example, worked with Pakistani dictator General Zia ul-Haq to train the mujahideen and Taliban fighters resisting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Subsequently, both the Clinton and Bush administrations allied with dictator General Pervez Musharraf, who in return notoriously maintained a double allegiance by providing Taliban targets to U.S. bombers while simultaneously supplying the Taliban with money and arms. Washington played a large role, moreover, in negotiating a political deal between Bhutto and Musharraf in the continued attempt to establish order in that chaotic region.
It is a wonder that Bhutto, a Western-educated and free-thinking Muslim female, gained any power at all. It is a tragedy that her downfall now appears historically inevitable, in Muñoz’s account. Mystery still shrouds her assassination, and the culprit remains elusive, but all arrows point to Bhutto’s enemies within the very government she was trying to change. General Musharraf, Bhutto’s negotiating partner, knew of the threats against her, yet failed to provide the promised security.
While Muñoz’s lack of commentary is possibly a point of weakness, as it weakens the book’s readability, it also leaves the reader free to conclude from the situation what they will. Hillsdale students are certainly not strangers to Bhutto’s interpretation of the American legacy, or to debate over foreign involvement. Regardless of major or level of political activity, Hillsdale students know of, and likely deeply appreciate, the first principles of the American creed that made our country strong and free. This inheritance demands that we continuously discover, dissect, and question our Western intellectual and moral heritage to preserve universal and time-tested truths.
Thus, Americans ought to be asking many questions about our country’s foreign policy. And Muñoz’s book addresses our decades-long involvement in countries like Pakistan and whether it has served to preserve or threaten the American legacy.