Annals of the War on Terror: Speaking Ill of the Dead

Filed under: Pakistan

If I tell you that I'm going to discuss the political views of someone named William Dalrymple, I probably don't have to tell you any more before you conclude that somebody with a name like that has almost got to be mistaken.

If I then tell you that I read his views in the New York Times, you'll certainly conclude without difficulty: "Oh, he's a moron for sure. Maybe even a traitor."

So I hardly need to give you the details. But click the jump, and I'll show you how this malignant little toadstool attempts to slander a great champion of democracy who's dead now and can't fight back, who gave her life for her country so putrid, scum-sucking apes like him could come and urinate on her grave.

Scary looking, isn't he?

The Times says about Mr. D only that he is "the author, most recently, of 'The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty', Delhi, 1857." Knowing about India a century and a half ago doesn't exactly qualify one as an expert on modern democratic politics in Pakistan, now does it? In fact, one might even posit that he's pro-India, and hence biased against Pakistan.

If you ask his own website, he's an "internationally acclaimed writer and historian" (modest, too) but his list of books doesn't contain one about modern Pakistani politics. Your learn that he spends half his year living in India. And he's written hymns to India in that black hole of propaganda Time magazine. Come to think of it, all his books seem to hymns to India too, don't they. Google him a bit, and you'll find out he's a rabid, fire-breathing Indiophile. Hmmm. Guess the Times just forgot to mention any of that by way of warning to its readers, right?

Here are the main points he makes in his outrageous, slanderous diatribe against Benazir Bhutto in the Nation's Paper of Wretched:

1. There is an "important difference" between assassinated Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Ghandi and Bhuto: "While Mr. Gandhi was assassinated by Sri Lankan Hindu extremists because of his policy of confronting them, Ms. Bhutto was apparently the victim of Islamist militant groups that she allowed to flourish under her administrations in the 1980s and 1990s."

That's not the only difference. Gandhi is accused of being on the payroll of the KGB, and India under his rule was known as the "KGB playground." But he probably just forgot to mention that, right? Or maybe he didn't, and the Times censored it?

2. "While it is true that the recruitment of jihadists had started before she took office and that Ms. Bhutto was insufficiently strong -- or competent -- to have had full control over either the intelligence services or the Pakistani Army when she was in office, it is equally naive to believe she had no influence over her country's foreign policy toward its two most important neighbors, India and Afghanistan."

This kind of thing is the indication of a true psychopath. A normal person would understand that you can't accuse someone of being both incompetent and evil. In fact, a normal potato can grasp that idea. Only a childish simpleton tries to have his poisonous cake and eat it too.

3. Everyone now knows how disastrous the rule of the Taliban turned out to be in Afghanistan, how brutally it subjected women and how it allowed Al Qaeda to train in camps within its territory. But another, and in the long term perhaps equally perilous, legacy of Ms. Bhutto's tenure is often forgotten: the turning of Kashmir into a jihadist playground.

Didn't he forget to mention that Bhutto is also responsible for 9/11? What do you think the people of Kashmir and Pakistan would say about India's behavior in Kashmir? At all blameworthy? Well, not in this psychopath's eyes, apparently. Kashmir is South Asia's Palestine, and to suggest there is only one side to the story is the indication of a true madman, a propagandist, someone who might was well be on New Delhi's payroll. As for women's rights, name one person who has done more for women's rights in the Muslim world than Benazir. Go ahead, name just one. I dare you. I double dare you. You can't, can you? No, I didn't think so.

4. I asked Benazir Bhutto about her Kashmir policy and the potential dangers of the growing role of religious extremists in the conflict during an interview in 1994. "India tries to gloss over its policy of repression in Kashmir," she replied. "India does have might, but has been unable to crush the people of Kashmir. We are not prepared to keep silent, and collude with repression."

Now, get this: He interviews her 13 YEARS ago, and based on that he condemns her. And for what? For saying that Pakistan is concerned about Indian aggression in Kashmir and doesn't want to sit idly by watching it happen? Perhaps she forgot to kiss his feet when he entered the room . . .

5. Benazir Bhutto's death is, of course, a calamity, particularly as she embodied the hopes of so many liberal Pakistanis. But, contrary to the commentary we've seen in the last week, she was not comparable to Myanmar's Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

That's quite true. Because, God bless her, Suu Kyi has never held actual power for one single second in Burma. So we haven't got the slightest idea what she would do if she did. Guess he just forgot to mention that too, right?

6. Within her own party, she declared herself the president for life and controlled all decisions.

Sounds just like Sonia Gandhi of India's Congress Party, doesn't it? Guess he just forgot to draw the parallel. Well, anybody can forget a thing or two, right?

7. Benazir Bhutto was certainly a brave and secular-minded woman. But the obituaries painting her as dying to save democracy distort history. Instead, she was a natural autocrat who has brought two nuclear powers to the brink of war.

Well, he certainly saved the best for last, didn't he? Apparently, by protesting against a military dictator enslaving her people while failing to crush radical Islamic terrorists, and seeking to secularize the nation's government, Benazir caused nuclear war to become imminent between Pakistan and India. Gosh, she must be just about that baddest nastiest lady on the whole planet, isn't she? Our papers sure are falling down on the job in reporting this stuff.

The American Spectator has it right when it says that Benazir's killing "should finally convince us that we are in the midst of a crucial international war to stop Islamist terrorists destroying all that is best in our imperfect world." AS continues:

Bernard-Henri Levy, the French philosopher, points out that with Benazir Bhutto, they killed 'a spectacularly visible woman' who, whatever her flaws as a political leader, was astonishingly brave in fighting -- uncovered, unveiled -- for politics 'and refusing the curse that, according to the new fascists [the jihadists], floats over the human face of women'. Levy suggests that Benazir's name should now become another password 'for those who still believe that the good genius of Enlightenment will win out over the evil genius of fanaticism and crime'. But the Enlightenment will be lost unless we all realise that we have to fight for it.

And part of that war is, as in any war, espionage.

Mr. Dalrymple has just been blown.

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