-- Reza Aslan, AC360 Contributor Did Hillary Clinton kill Benazir Bhutto? Not quite, though Barack Obama's right hand man thinks she may have had something to do with it.
"She was a strong supporter of the war in Iraq," David Axelrod said, speaking of Hillary "which we would submit, is one of the reasons why we were diverted from Afghanistan, Pakistan and al-Qaeda, who may have been players in this event today. So that's a judgment she'll have to defend."
It is certainly not unexpected that a presidential campaign would use Bhutto's assassination to score political points. Look for Rudy Giuliani to ratchet up his "Muslims are coming to kill your babies!" stump speech in the coming days.
But Axelrod's comments are not just distasteful. They're nonsensical. Exactly how were we diverted from Pakistan because of the war in Iraq? If it weren't for the Iraq war, and the larger war on terror, we would not give Pakistan a second's thought. The country would still be under US sanctions for its illegal nuclear program.
Perhaps Axelrod means to say that our presence in Iraq has elevated the terrorist threat in Pakistan, thereby forcing the US into an uncomfortably cozy relationship with -- and $10 billion in aid to -- the country’s military dictator, Pervez Musharraf, which he seems to have squandered on military equipment to maintain a police state rather than fight al-Qaeda elements in the country, thereby compelling the US to send in Bhutto under a power sharing agreement with Musharraf to salvage what's left of Pakistan's democracy, thus tainting her as an American stooge and leading to her assassination by the very same al-Qaeda elements that Musharraf has yet to do anything about.
Perhaps.
One thing is certain though. If things continue to spiral out of control in the wake of Bhutto's death, Obama might get his chance to fulfill a campaign promise to invade Pakistan were Pervez Musharraf to lose power in a coup.