Quote Originally Posted by Breukelen advocaat
Not true. She was accused of these things, and more, by other governments and observers outside of her own country. Her own niece has written articles condemning her. She was taking advantage of a bad situation, and was very good at portraying herself as a martyr. As her's was the only government in the area of the Middle East that supported the Taliban, that's enough to make her an example of power-hungery scum who cared for nobody and nothing but herself.
This precisely why I used the term "distorted interpretation" earlier. Because youâ??re often missing the complete story and will draw your conclusion based on only a percentage of it. Thatâ??s nothing new here, but itâ??s always a little hard to debate someone whose conclusions donâ??t factor in the concept that political positions, like world events, change over time. Same way you donâ??t factor in the larger picture on so many other issues from politics to history to children to parental responsibilities.

Early on, a lot more people than Bhutto thought the Taliban had some hope for stabilizing Afghanistan, which had been at war with Russia for so long and which those closer to the situation in the Middle East thought could be positively molded by support and influence from Pakistan and could then improve the trade situation in and out of Pakistan and all over that northeastern part of the world above them. There were plenty of senators and foreign policy experts in America who thought this exact same thing and early on, our very own government seems to have helped with funding of the madrasahs that supplied them. Support of the early Taliban was an even more common belief among European statesmen.

They were wrong, obviously. Everyone with sense soon realized the error of their ways when they saw the Talibs were abusing human rights at unprecedented rates and burgeoning with religious fundamentalists cultivated at the most extremist madrasahs in Pakistan. The early thoughts about the Taliban, however, were that it represented some hope for stability that hadn't been present before. Bhutto was certainly not alone in that belief.

She was, of course, much too intelligent, peace-supporting and progressive for the crazy Taliban that emerged and changed her position, like all the rest of intelligent civilization, when it became clear who they really were. She was quite vocal about her anti-Taliban position in recent years. She recently said she thought Musharaff was letting the Taliban resurge in Pakistan, which is something everyone working in military intelligence has known for well over three years (one of my oldest friends works in military intelligence in Pakistan and, before that, Afghanistan). I suspect her outspokenness helped fuel todayâ??s events and may have even been the leading contributor to her assassination.