Bin Laden Is Dead

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It occurred to me this evening, as I watched the news reports of Osama bin Laden's death, that this must be how Americans felt in the spring of 1945 when they heard that Hitler had died.

I've been watching the spontaneous gathering of jubilant Americans outside the White House, chanting "U–S–A" and singing the national anthem.

It's appropriate, considering that the 9–11 attacks were widely compared to the attacks on Pearl Harbor, that bin Laden should be killed almost on the anniversary of Hitler's death.

And, in a way, bin Laden's death is more satisfying. He did not take his own life, as Hitler did. Instead, he apparently was killed by the actions of American forces.

We will never have the satisfaction of bringing him into a courtroom and making him answer for those thousands of deaths. But what happened today may have always been the closest we could ever have expected to get to justice in this case.

Bin Laden's death does not mean the end of Muslim terrorism. That war will continue, probably indefinitely. Because of where it occurred — Pakistan — I would expect that his presence in that country will raise new questions and issues. It may also affect America's relationship with Afghanistan, which can reasonably claim that it was right all along, that bin Laden had not been hiding there.

That may or may not be the case. And tonight, it isn't really important.

Sure, there are things that demand our attention. Many Americans who are living abroad will be at risk of being targeted by terrorists for retaliation in the days, weeks, even months ahead.

But this is a rare time of celebration for a nation that is weary.

The Shifting Sands in the Middle East

DEBKAfile says its military sources are reporting that "some 20,000 troops of Pakistan's 14th Division are said to have been diverted from the Waziristan border region with Afghanistan to the Line of Control in Kashmir and the international border with India."

This poses a problem for the incoming Obama administration because, as DEBKAfile reports, it represents "a loss of one-fifth of the total Pakistani force fighting the Taliban and al Qaeda."

Someone is going to have to pick up the slack if the Taliban are to be kept from re-taking control of Afghanistan and making it the sanctuary for al Qaeda that it was before the 2001 terrorist attacks.

Once again, I urge Obama to re-deploy troops from Iraq to Afghanistan so the important work that has been done there in the last seven years will not be undone because of increasing tensions between Pakistan and India.

And I urge Hillary Clinton, as the incoming secretary of state, to get involved immediately to prevent hostilities between Pakistan and India. Such hostilities would almost certainly result in the use of nuclear weapons by one or even both.

And such an exchange is the last thing the world needs.

Report: Bhutto Was About to Warn U.S.

CNN is reporting today that former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was about to warn American lawmakers of a plot to rig the parliamentary elections in Pakistan.

The assassination occurred just a few hours before Ms. Bhutto was to have met with Rep. Patrick Kennedy and Sen. Arlen Specter.

That would certainly give the government plenty of motive to get Ms. Bhutto out of the picture.

In the Washington Post, another former Pakistani prime minister, Muhammad Nawaz Sharif, writes about "the future Pakistan deserves."

And he says that future should not include Pervez Musharraf.

"The country is paying a very heavy price for the many unpardonable actions of one man," Sharif writes. "The world must realize that Musharraf's policies have neither limited nor curbed terrorism. In fact, terrorism is stronger than ever, with far more sinister aspects."

Exhumation Receives Approval

Pakistani officials have approved the exhumation of Benazir Bhutto's remains for an autopsy, CNN is reporting.

But the government apparently is standing behind its most recent version of events -- that Bhutto died as the result of her head striking a sunroof lever in her vehicle.

CNN quotes Brig. Javed Iqbal Cheema as saying, "We don't mind if the People's Party leadership wants her body to be exhumed and post-mortemed. They are most welcome, but we gave you what the facts are."

I'm glad there will be an autopsy, but it remains to be seen what kind of evidence we get and the conclusions that are reached.

We must be vigilant about verifying the authenticity of every autopsy photograph and video recording.

More About the Cause of Death

CNN reports that one of Benazir Bhutto's top aides, who helped bathe the body after the assassination, contends that "there were clear bullet injuries to her head."

The aide also says, "It's beginning to look like a coverup to me."

The aide refers to assertions by the Pakistani government that Bhutto suffered no gunshot or bomb shrapnel injuries, but instead died after striking her head on a lever inside her vehicle.

That is the third and most recent version of events as provided by the Pakistani government.

If there is a coverup in the works in Pakistan, I would say that al-Qaeda -- or whoever is behind the plot -- has a lot to learn about engineering and carrying out a successful coverup.

There have been high profile assassinations in this country -- i.e., John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King -- and there always has been a segment of the population that has been convinced that they were the results of conspiracies.

But if they were plots, they were designed to answer (however weakly, in some cases) questions that were bound to come up or confuse the issue on questions that couldn't be convincingly answered.

It's called "plausible deniability." You've got to pick a story and stick with it. Constantly changing a story to deal with inconvenient facts makes the case weaker.

If the responsibility for Bhutto's murder is being covered up, the perpetrators didn't plan well enough to deal effectively with the most obvious question that was likely to come up.

Was Bhutto shot from up close? (If you're familiar with Robert F. Kennedy's assassination, you know that a similar question has dogged the case for nearly 40 years. Kennedy's assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, fired his weapon from Kennedy's side, but witnesses have said there were bullet wounds in the back of Kennedy's head, supposedly fired from point-blank range. Sirhan was a few feet away, and he was never in a position to fire his gun at the back of Kennedy's head.)

This is why I have said that it probably will be necessary to exhume the body and perform a proper autopsy to obtain definitive answers.

An autopsy can tell us, for example, whether someone was struck by gunfire -- and how close the weapon was when it was fired. With the lack of security, it's possible that the shot was fired from inside the vehicle. The suicide bomber, who was captured on film firing a gun, may have been equipped only with blanks -- possibly a diversionary tactic. His bomb may have been intended to obliterate all evidence -- and accomplices.

But the most important evidence -- the body itself -- is still available.

The Washington Post reports that the Bush administration is worried about a new offensive by Islamic extremists in the region.

At the very least, in the United States, this is an important opportunity for voters to find out how much each presidential candidate really knows about the world and its politics.

If recent comments tell us anything about Mike Huckabee, for example, they indicate that those who expressed concerns about his lack of foreign policy experience were sadly correct in their assessments.

The New York Times reports that, in the aftermath of the assassination, candidates with foreign policy credentials who hadn't caught on with the voters (i.e., Joe Biden and Bill Richardson) are finding themselves in the spotlight. Whether those candidates remain in the spotlight, voters need to keep their attention on foreign policy.

George W. Bush's lack of foreign policy expertise came up briefly in the 2000 campaign, but it was soon reduced to a very low order of priority. Voters seemed to find the trait endearing and preferred to discuss the economy, taxes, Social Security and other domestic issues -- and leave foreign policy matters to Dick Cheney's "gravitas."

And that was despite the fact that terrorists attacked the U.S.S. Cole less than a month before the election.

David Frum says, in the National Post, that candidates in both parties have demonstrated "truly disturbing indifference to the outside world and its dangers," and he urges them to "confront some dangerously neglected facts."

What's the view of the crisis from other parts of the world? Well, The Australian says America fails to protect its Muslim allies. It's hard to argue that point.

In 2008, voters will have to debate the foreign policy merits of each candidate. We have to educate ourselves about the world and we have to insist on leaders who know as much about the globe as they do about voting districts and demographics.

If we're fortunate enough in the future to have another Benazir Bhutto on our side in the Muslim world, we have to do everything in our power to protect her. We clearly cannot count on governments like the one ruling Pakistan.

Isolationism is not practical. And neither is it practical to assume the rest of the world wants to be just like the United States.

Bhutto's Cause of Death -- Clarified?

It was reported today that Benazir Bhutto actually did not die from a gunshot wound or shrapnel from a bomb.

Although I guess you could say they contributed to her death.

Actually, it really isn't clear today what caused the two-time Pakistani prime minister's death. CNN reports that Pakistan's Interior Ministry claims Bhutto was not hit by the gunfire; instead, it appears she died from a fractured skull when her head struck a lever inside her vehicle. The lever allegedly was connected to the sunroof. Bhutto had been standing in the open sunroof prior to the attack.

A national security analyst for CNN says Bhutto's enemies are "trying to deny her a martyr's death" by minimizing the circumstances. And the Washington Post reports that Bhutto had many enemies, that there were many people who had the means -- and the motive -- to assassinate her.

Al-Qaeda remains a likely suspect, but apparently there were also those in the Pakistani government who had their reasons for wanting to see Bhutto dead.

I'm inclined to believe that al-Qaeda was involved. It seems to me that Osama bin Laden put a multi-million-dollar bounty on Bhutto's head some 10 years ago.

This is starting to look like another one of those cases we may never resolve. But we'll probably get to hear many conspiracy theories.

In The Hill, Sam Youngman writes that Sen. Hillary Clinton is calling for an independent international investigation into Bhutto's slaying.

In keeping with Muslim practice, Bhutto was buried today, the day after her assassination. She was laid to rest in the family's mausoleum in Garhi Khuda Bakhsh, near the remains of her father and two brothers.

The Islamabad International News reports the burial was carried out "amid touching scenes." Those "scenes" presumably included her husband and three children.

With questions surrounding the cause of death, I think it will be necessary to exhume the body and conduct an autopsy to get the answers. In my life, I have seen many cases that became shrouded in uncertainty because proper autopsies were not performed. It seems ridiculous not to take advantage of the knowledge that can be gained with today's forensic methods.

Friday was another day of violence and unrest in Pakistan. And it was another busy day on the campaign trail in the United States. At Townhall.com, Michael Medved says there are "five powerful messages for American voters –- and candidates" in yesterday's assassination.

The candidates, who have spent much of the campaign debating domestic issues, should read Medved's piece and address the threat of terrorism before Iowa's voters participate in Thursday's caucuses. I don't dispute the fact that it's important for voters to know how candidates feel about health care, the economy, energy, the environment and abortion, but it's essential for them to hear about terrorism.

Medved makes some good points. I don't always agree with what he says, but it's hard to argue with some of his logic in the immediate aftermath of yesterday's attack.

Those who ignore the implications of the attack do so at the risk of us all.

Benazir Bhutto Assassinated

Today's assassination of Pakistan's Benazir Bhutto was a sobering reminder of an observation that I believe is attributed to Abraham Lincoln. If I'm wrong about that, please, someone set me straight!

The observation, essentially, was that anyone who was willing to exchange his life for Lincoln's could do so.

That's what happened today in Pakistan -- literally. Bhutto's assassin apparently fired a gun at Bhutto, striking her with a fatal shot, and then blew himself up with a bomb. News reports indicate the assassin's head was found about 90 feet away.

Bhutto had been prime minister of Pakistan twice. And twice she was driven from office. She was attempting a comeback at the time of her death.

In the Washington Post, David Ignatius remembers the young Benazir Bhutto he knew.

But he also knows that her assassination is "a warning that the path to the modern Pakistan she dreamed of creating won't be easy."

The extremists are determined to resist, and al-Qaeda appears to have found some safe havens in that country. Many people feel that it is all but certain that al-Qaeda and/or the Taliban had a role in this attack.

It's also a reminder that the extremists do not permit gender to stand in the way of violent acts.

When one thinks of political assassinations, one is inclined to think of men because mostly men have been the victims of violent attacks. And women are usually seen as the nurturers of the species. But attacks are rarely bloodier or more violent than the one that took Bhutto's life.

And assassinations often spark chaos and rioting. In the hours after Bhutto's death, large cities in Pakistan, such as Islamabad, Karachi and Lahore, witnessed outbreaks of rioting. It is similar, in some ways, to the rioting that broke out in the United States in the hours following Martin Luther King's murder in 1968.

It doesn't take much of a leap of one's imagination to anticipate a bleak immediate future for Pakistan, possibly dissolving into civil war.

The United States must be prepared to take an active role in Pakistan's future. Now and for a long time to come. Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards told CNN's Wolf Blitzer tonight that America has "enormous leverage" to wield in this regard.

With the presence of Islamic extremists and people with nuclear know-how in the same country, it is in America's interest to act. There is more at stake in that part of the world than ever before. Make no mistake about it.

There are no easy answers.