Musharraf: Bhutto’s To Blame for Her Own Death
Although I, like Jim Henley, believe that it was unwise for Benazir Bhutto to stick her head out of the car during a huge really (which made it a bit difficult to protect her), I don’t quite see how one can pretend that only she is to blame for her horrible death.
Pakistan’s President Pervez Mursharraf, however, disagrees:
“For standing up outside the car, I think it was she to blame alone — nobody else. Responsibility is hers,” the former general told CBS’ “60 Minutes.”…
Asked if Bhutto could have been shot, Musharraf said, “Yes, absolutely, yes. Possibility.” He has said he welcomes an international investigation.
Musharraf, who seized power in a bloodless coup in 1999, rejected criticism that his government did not do enough to provide security to Bhutto, who was seeking to regain the post of prime minister. He noted that she had already survived one assassination attempt and “was given more security than any other person.”
OK Pervez, here’s the deal: if you want the West to continue to support you, you will at least have to act as if you’re able to feel compassion for your opponents. It’s not as if no one in the West believes you didn’t have anything to do with Bhutto’s death, so it’s wise for you to at least pretend that you feel horrible about her sudden death and that you want those responsible punished.
OK?
While Musharraf is certainly indulging in some blame-the-victim CYA there, his point is not without merit. She didn’t just "stick her head out of the car." She sat on top of it while parading through massive crowds, mere weeks after surviving a major suicide-bomb assassination attempt that killed over a hundred people in just missing her.
When you insist on gambling like that, the odds do not tilt in your favor. Even the Pope has more sense.
Tully: I agree, that’s what I said as well, didn’t I? "Although I, like Jim Henley, believe that it was unwise for Benazir Bhutto to stick her head out of the car during a huge really (which made it a bit difficult to protect her), I don’t quite see how one can pretend that only she is to blame for her horrible death."
Michael, where does Musharraf blame her entirely for the assassination? In the quote you cite, he blames her solely for "standing up outside the car". And on that particular point, he is surely correct. She and she alone decided whether she would stand up and expose herself or not.
It seems to me that he’s not just referring to putting her head outside of the car, but being killed.
To my mind, that depends on the question he was asked, which CNN doesn’t bother to give us. If he was asked a very broad question like "who was responsible for her death," then I would agree with your take. But if he was asked something more narrow, or something about his own government’s responsibility (e.g., "many people suggest your government was responsible at least for not preventing the assassination, do you agree?"), then I don’t think that would be an accurate reading of his statement.
Remember, the MSM likes to foment controversy whenever it can, and a very common way of doing it is to present a potentially extreme quotation out of real context.
Here’s the context of how the question was asked:
There’s a video of the entire interview here too.
Thanks for the additional info, Christine. In context, it looks to me like they are talking very specifically about the last fateful decision, not the assassination as a whole. When Musharraf asks "who’s to blame," it is in response to Logan’s question "why did she stand up in the hatch."
If you look at the earlier part of the interview to see how the subject came up, they first started discussing "mistakes" in the context of 145 people being killed in a previous assassination attempt after Musharraf’s administration warned her of a specific threat, and Bhutto chose to go in a procession rather than a helicopter.
So to me, I don’t see at all that Musharraf is blaming "only Bhutto" for the assassination, but he is discussing the responsibility that she does bear for not taking better steps to protect herself. This is a man, after all, who himself lives in daily threat of assassination. He knows what he’s talking about, and must himself make the same decisions from day to day, balancing risk with the need for political leaders to be seen in public, to interact with the public. Notice how careful he is not to criticize getting out of the car generally, but specifically to criticize only the decision about how to leave the rally, saying she should have waved, then gotten in the car and left speedily after that.
I disagree entirely. Who’s responsible for her standing up? She of course. My God, that’s not much of a question is it? But that’s not what it is about, that’s not how I interpret it. He basically argues that if she wouldn’t have stand up, she wouldn’t have been killed, thus she’s to blame.
That’s the argument you are putting in his mouth, Michael, not the argument that he is making. They are talking very specifically about the method of assassination, the risks of assassination in a crowded environment like that one. They were not talking about the general risk of assassination, about the overall picture, about any larger point. They are talking SPECIFICALLY about how the incident happened.
You acknowledge that Bhutto bears some responsibility for the assassination (in the sense that she could have prevented it with better personal security precautions). How else could Musharraf have limited his statements to that issue than with the statements he made? Keep in mind, too, that all of his statements are in the context of a mass attempt to blame HIM for her assassination. He’s highlighting how much security they provided her, and how useless security is, in the end, when the person being protected makes decisions like that. As between the two of them, there’s very little else that Musharraf could have done to prevent the assassination. He provided her with intelligence on the extremists, offered different means of protection, gave her lots of extra security. In context, he’s clearly not saying that NOBODY else bears responsibility for her killing, like the extremists.
He’s been fighting the Islamic extremists harder than any other leader of Pakistan in decades. He’s conducted massive purges of the internal security forces in the wake of 9/11. He’s a VERY high value target for the Taliban and al Qaeda. Why would he ever fail to blame the extremists for her assassination?
It certainly seems a bit cold-hearted, but El Presidente is correct technically and I appreciate his honesty. He could have very easily refused to answer because "it’s such a tragedy and we’re all still mourning… and blah blah blah…"
And I for one hope that Musharraf never seriously takes the opinions of the FireDogLake people into account when making major policy decisions. As Chris says, he gave an honest answer, not a "feel good" answer.
Did he like Bhutto? He answered quite honestly. At that level, it’s not about like and dislike, it’s about the needs of the people of the country. It’s a Western thing to want our rulers to get along personally, to be, or at least pretend to be, close personal friends. If he wanted to trash Bhutto, Musharraf could have spent the interview talking about her family’s corruption and nepotism, the hundreds of millions they stashed which should have been used to improve the lives of their fellow Pakistanis. He didn’t do that.
I agree with Pat and Chris here. The specific point he made was that for standing up in the car, she was responsible- not for her assassination in general. The only way I could see making the case for that would be if he had refused to give her protection and then tried to justify it like that. But clearly he’s saying that they were trying to give her as much protection as possible, but when she goes and does something like that, there’s nothing anyone could do at that point to protect her.
What Pat said.
The question as re-framed out of context is a clear attempt to exploit the inflammatory blaming-the-victim meme for rhetorical purposes. "See how mean and nasty Musharraf is!" But the fact remains, Bhutto made bad security decisions with the full and complete foreknowledge that doing so greatly increased the odds not just of her own death, but the deaths of those in her immediate vicinity, even if she should survive the inevitable attempt.
So forgive me if I don’t buy the "you should be outraged!" rhetoric. Musharraf stated a truth. Bhutto made bad security decisions knowing full well what the results could be. She gambled not just with her own life but with the lives of others. She lost. Nobody forced her to place the bet.
The emotive rabbit-in-the-hat here is conflating the assignment of criminal responsibility with the "contributory negligence" exhibited on the part of the victim, equating reduced guilt with reduced sympathy when the two are NOT conjoined. The guilt of the criminal is not reduced by the knowing contributory negligence of the victim–only the sympathy for the victim is reduced.