Cui Bono
I see that for nearly a month now I haven't written any posts obsessing over various segments of media-chosen current events. This is remiss, and it isn't as though I haven't been paying attention. Here are a couple of stories still at loose ends for which the sorting principle of Cui Bono applies. Pakistan Post Bhutto. This is not a small story. Here more than anywhere else lies the potential for a grand unraveling of the United States participation in the Grand Game
Militants Escape Control of Pakistan, Officials Say - New York Times. It is still worth asking who was responsible for Benazir Bhutto's assassination, Because Justice will be served by determining this and justice and rule of law is the one of the ways you hold the line. One can also ask what happens to U S policy now? In very general terms it cannot change. Pakistan's nuclear weapons must be kept secure from those inclined to irrationality. The autonomous regions of Pakistan and uncontrolled territory within Afghanistan (which shouldn't be thought of as lawless or anarchistic exactly) should be shrunk and controlled with regard to being safe havens of violent extremism. Or at least not be allowed to expand. Who benefits by Bhutto's assassination. Al Qaeda? Yes, depending on how much weight one puts on her declared intentions to control the Taliban on Pakistan's borderland, and this against her ability to actually put this into effect. Musharraf however gains directly with Bhutto and the US behind her as their preferred favorite he has to share power with a detested rival - as must all those aligned with him never part of the Bhutto family political machine. With her dead he shares nothing, he has all power. He has his security apparatus arrest a teenager or two, its all solved
The Associated Press: 2 Arrested in Bhutto Assassination Plot. Even the US must come with hat in one hand and cash in the other
C.I.A. Says Militant Was Behind Bhutto's Death.
Another murky question where it's useful to ask who benefits from what seems to have happened. Why did the CIA make then destroy tapes of the integration of prisoners from their extraordinary rendition program. This is a question central to the administration's drive to accumulate extra-legal powers on a number of fronts
Account of C.I.A. Tapes Is Challenged - New York Times. The tapes where made not merely to record and assess the interrogation they were insurance, that the activities involved conformed to the political cover and instruction. When it became apparent that executive mandate could not might not legal authority for these action they became a liability. As much for the authoritarians in the bureaucratic shadows as for those that implemented them
Station Chief Made Appeal To Destroy CIA Tapes - washingtonpost.com. The removal of a direct photographic record at the least works to preclude an artificial judicial focus on the floor actors as happened with Abu Gharib. The person often named as the individual who made the decision to have the tapes shredded, Jose A. Rodriguez Jr, is also the person I mentioned in a post last fall for giving a speech at a conference saying the CIA decision-making and analysis would benefit from having more ethnic diversity.
The last issue is less clear to me. This years Democratic Caucus by which I mean the general run of the Democratic party politicking, why make it personal? Why fight on the level of gender and racial abstractions? I only have some partial answers. First it serves to make it a two person race, it cuts Edwards out. As well there may be campaign logic that in the Democratic primaries the black vote like the labor vote (to the degree these exists as such) must be won by one candidate or another. The race for the nomination has become more visceral more personal because more casual populist political referencing has been ineffective between these candidates. The Democratic primaries so far have had strong turnouts there may be an awareness that in an era of voter ennui and active voter suppression keeping base voters feeling engaged is critical or they may not come out on election day.
Considering that the general election will be conducted on level of unparalleled viciousness a conscious perhaps even somewhat agreed upon decision to broach the subject of race and gender to inoculate the candidates and rehearse solutions has been tendered. Paraphrasing Tip O'Neil's homily on politics; all politics keeps at least one foot in the fear filled darkness of non reasoning mass reaction. (cf Gustave Le Bon
The crowd; a study of the popular-mind. [WorldCat.org]. London, T. F. Unwin 1896.) where our lurkers-at-the-threshold take notes
Rove's rhetoric is a bid to stay relevant | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle .
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