Honoring Benazir Bhutto

The assassination of a political leader half-way around the world does not have any thing to do with the Big 4. But the stories on the radio and on line prompted me to write something about this amazing woman. Ms. Bhutto was a wife, a mother, a daughter, and a politician. She was also a person who cared enough about her country to risk her life for it.

Benazir Bhutto had been warned by President Pervez Musharraf and others not to campaign so publicly, but she remained defiant. “I put my life in danger and came here because I feel this country is in danger,” she said Thursday.

Is there anything (not anyone…) you are so passionate about that you would risk your life to pursue it?

Bhutto’s death raises spectre of instability
Benazir Bhutto, the first elected female leader of a Muslim state, was on Thursday killed in a gun and bomb attack, throwing nuclear-armed Pakistan into turmoil in the run-up to next month’s general election.

The popular but divisive politician, who served as Pakistan’s prime minister twice between 1988 and 1996, sustained fatal injuries as she left an election rally in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi.

Bhutto: A Brief Bio
Born June 21, 1953, into a wealthy landowning family in southern Pakistan
Daughter of a former prime minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was executed in 1979 after being deposed in a military coup
Studied politics and government
Two-time prime minister
Left country in 1999 to avoid corruption charges
Eight years of self-imposed exile
Recent return was targeted by suicide bombing that killed more than 140 people
First woman to lead a modern Muslim nation
Hoped to lead pro-Western, democratic government against Islamic militants
Had talked with President Musharraf of a possible power-sharing deal
Brother Murtaza died in a gun battle with police in Karachi in 1996
Youngest brother, Shahnawaz, died under mysterious circumstances in France a decade earlier
— from The Associated Press via www.npr.org