Hear, hear.

Powerful rebuttal, Josh, especially the MLK line.  Of course, most of the type of folks who populate FDD probably WOULD have argued that MLK's murderer represented the "real America" in 1968.  

(I stress that I do not mean the FDD guys themselves -- those neocons were good little civil rights Democrats back then.  But I'm talking about the right wing more generally.)

You guys are right that radical Islam isn't perhaps the real Pakistan, at least no al-Qaeda.  But (and I didn't read his article) McCarthy is correct in the broader sense.  Benazir was killed by a country that is chaotic and violent and not a state in any real sense: it is a post-colonial, wholly invented cobbled-up gobbedlygook of equally random borders and violence.  Bhutto's life and death are a product of that.  So while McCarthy might be wrong in what he says is the real Pakistan, he isn't wrong in the main.

Also, the polls that have 63% supporting Pinky have to be taken with some context- the deep unpopularity of Musharaff, her very name, and the way Pakistan, like Israel, recycles through politicians, always forgetting the bad stuff they did last time in office.   Bhutto was not the choice of the brave lawyers and judges who stood for democracy.  They didn't like the power-sharing backroom deals she brokered with the general.   The people who stood for her weren't all standing for democracy.  They were standing for the exiled Bhutto heiress, the one whose destiny was always intertwined with her tragic land, perhaps at no other time so much as today.  

Of course McCarthy is right, that the real Pakistan killed Bhutto, just like the real France killed Jaurès and the real Germany killed Rathenau.  Democracy is the result of a civil society, not the cause.  Pakistan is nowhere near being a civil society, hence democracy there is the pipe dream of fatuous Western pundits.  Whether one calls it jihadist or not, and regardless of faction, Pakistan, since its inception, has been a society of murder, terrorist sympathies, corruption, anti-humanism, tribalism, vendetta and nuclear banditry.  Until Pakistan and other Muslim countries shed their barbarity -- which may be never, given the mindset which Islam articulates and justifies -- they will continue to devour their own, and Muslim democracy will remain an oxymoron.

jm_rice, given that the massive demonstrations against Musharraf's government last month were not perpetrated by al Qaeda, but by Pakistani liberals, wouldn't you say that it's at best misleading to say that the real Pakistan is a "society composed of murder terrorist sympathies, corruption, anti-humanism, tribalism, vendetta, and nuclear banditry"? Bhutto's supporters, and even those of Sharif, are not al Qaeda.

Instead of giving a monolithic and just blatantly untrue picture of Pakistani society, why not actually try and remember what this whole mess is about? Musharraf didn't want to relinquish power, so he purged the judiciary, shut down the media, and blocked political dissent. In other words, he was making a mockery of Pakistan's limited democracy and Bhutto's movement (quite a popular one) sought to rectify this. How is this "barbarity"?

Muslim democracy is possible (and already exists, in Turkey) under the right conditions. Al Qaeda is masterful at undermining these conditions, but they are not the "real Pakistan." How can you simply ignore the fact that the Pakistani Islamists are polling at 4%?

So George W. Bush polls at 9% in Pakistan?  Well, when you think about it, that's really not too bad.  

He doesn't poll much better here.

bone, you really should read the McCarthy article.  Much as it pains me to say this, the National Review has some really good pieces about Pakistan in the wake of the Bhutto assassination.

And rozenson, Turkey is not a Muslim democracy.  It is a secular democracy with a majority Muslim population.  

Perhaps Bhutto was a little d democrat, but she failed to show it when she was actually in office.  Then, she and her coterie, led by her husband, was your run of the mill completely corrupt 3rd world leader.  I expect she would have been again, had she won office.

Let's have no lionization of Bhutto.  Perhaps her death can show the Pakistani people just what the alternative to order is, whether under Musharraf or someone else.

Rozenson, if your point is tha Muslims can govern themselves democratically, with your example of Turkey, I agree.  But it is also true that Turkey is secular BY LAW, and their military has not been shy about reinforcing the point every decade or so.

Ataturk may have been a rather gruesome fellow, but it's hard to argue that he wasn't on to something.  Turkey might look alot like Pakistan right now without him.

Bhutto represents the real Paksitan in that it's impossible to even deal with, let alone manage, the exhausting contradictions in their political culture.  

One day I'm cheering their heroic lawyers, brawling in the streets for democracy (ha) in their suits and ties, the next day 200 innocent people are blown up by extremists.  One day Musharaff is our ally, the next his double-agent status comes roaring back to bite us. One day Bhutto is a photogenic relic of a corrupt strain through Pakistani culture, the next day she is a martyred saint.

After awhile, all I can do is watch.  One day I have affection for the place (crazy as that is), the next I fear and loathe it.  Welcome to the world of Pakistan.

Josh, when you started at TNR, I didn't much like reading you. I found you a bit too, well, politically correct, and not from an interesting enough perspective or with enough sharp detail to warrant reading. So I didn't read you for a while. This post is excellent, as are others I've read recently. Congratulations, then, although this might just reflect my fickle nature more than your own growth.

"Instead of giving a monolithic and just blatantly untrue picture of Pakistani society, why not actually try and remember what this whole mess is about?"  I say practice what you preach.  Others have disposed of your Turkey example.  As for Pakistan, the notion that what I say is "blatantly untrue," that Pakistan is or ever has been a civil society, betrays rank historical obtuseness.  You talk as if Musharraf is unique in Pakistan.  Or that street demonstrations amount to democracy.  A society marked by murder (the political and religious solution in Pakistan), terrorist sympathies (half the country supports al-Qaeda), corruption (every government since its founding and on every level), anti-humanism (do you really need examples?), tribalism (Pakistan's basic social order), vendetta (cf. murder) and nuclear banditry (Kahn is a Pakistani folk hero) is by definition barbaric.  If you don't like the definition, then dream on.  I'm not a great fan of Musharraf -- his refusal to protect Bhutto is depraved-indifference murder -- but if Iraq has proved nothing else, it's that you can't have democracy without order.  To bring the order that permitted democracy to function in Turkey, Ataturk used an iron fist.  He was a military man.  This lesson was not lost on Nasser, who failed, or on General Musharraf, who is failing. (Saddam coerced a civil society, which might have allowed for democracy had he allowed it.)  The reason Ataturk succeed at all may simply be that the Turks are not remote from the West and its values and thus need less coercion.  The degree to which Turkey is a civil society is the degree to which it is NOT a Muslim society.  The facts on the ground make the case, that the problem with Pakistan is the Pakistanis, far more persuasively than your sentiment.  By the way, I'm not blaming religion. Religion is not the cause of behavior but the articulation and justification of the values manifested by behavior.  Eliminating Islam is like mowing weeds.  To address Islam's iniquities one must change the mindset which gives rise to them.  If that could be achieved, you would magically see Muslim societies become civil societies and, incidentally, less Islamic.  Pakistanis, because they are remote from liberal democracy (except India, which they view marginally better than the way the Arabs view Israel) are poor candidates for democracy.  Those noble lawyers you cite happen to have been protesting Musharraf's ouster of the Pakistani supreme court.  And if you would "try and remember," that supreme court was dominated by Islamists, who notoriously overruled lower courts, in restoring barbaric sentences for blasphemy against Islam.  Try and remember that human rights are NOT about democracy, i.e. majority vote.  And that democracy without order is mob rule...you know, as in Pakistan.