Robert L. Terrell

Benizir Bhotto’s horrific assassination has engendered intense speculation here in the United States among members of the elite castes who dominate public dialogue pertinent to the nation’s international affairs. Much of the commentary centers on two questions. What is the significance of her death? And how should the U.S. respond? Each of the dominant presidential candidates provided near immediate responses, none of which demonstrated even minimal understanding of the probable geopolitical significance of her life and death.

Members of the elite, corporate media are proving to be similarly clueless regarding Bhutto’s geopolitical significance. As is the case with most of the presidential candidates, their inability to address her significance in a coherent manner is due in large part to their ignorance of the people, culture and politics of Pakistan, and the contorted position in geopolitical affairs it was forced to assume in the wake of the devastating 9-11 attacks in the United States.

The paltry range of opinions being expressed via the mainstream news media regarding the most appropriate U.S. response to Bhutto’s assassination is strikingly narrow, and the more those who dominate public dialogue regarding the matter prattle on with their xenophobic bromides, the more obvious is the fact that few of them are capable of providing viable recommendations. This is due to several factors, most of which are tied inextricably to the imperial fantasies broadly shared by the dominant elements in U.S. ruling castes. Those fantasies are deeply rooted in colonial tropes associated with the systems of white supremacy that shape much of the military and economic apparatus that U.S. elites use to exert their power and priorities around the world. They are also product of hegemonic fantasies based on the notion that the U.S. Government has the might, right and capacity to manage the domestic affairs of other nations, irrespective of the aspirations and intentions of their citizens.

Thus, elite commentators commonly opine in ways, which reveal thier sense Pakistan is little more than another colony, or dependency, such as Puerto Rico, Kenya or the U.S. Virgin Islands. The fact that much of that which transpires in Pakistan, and much of the rest of the non-western world, most notably India and China, are beyond the definitive control of U.S. power is currently beyond their recognition. Thus, they fret, fume and pontificate, hopelessly seeking to strike a tone or note that may somehow or another make a positive difference regarding U.S. hegemonic objectives in Pakistan

Were it not for the dispiriting, dangerously deteriorating quagmires currently underway in Iraq and Afghanistan, more of them would probably be calling for something resembling shock and awe-style military intervention. But the hard learned lessons of those rash, belligerent, poorly conceived and foolishly managed, slow motion failures offer more insights into what the U.S. Government should not to do vis-à-vis Pakistan than what it should do in the wake of Bhutto’s funeral, and the ensuing chaos.