Andrew C. McCarthy on Benazir Bhutto on National Review Online

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MTExNmE0MzY3YjBlYWEwZDkzOThkMWJiM2JmZGQ2NDE=

Whether we get round to admitting it or not, in Pakistan, our quarrel is with the people. Their struggle, literally, is jihad. For them, freedom would mean institutionalizing the tyranny of Islamic fundamentalism. They are the same people who, only a few weeks ago, tried to kill Benazir Bhutto on what was to be her triumphant return to prominence — the symbol, however dubious, of democracy's promise. They are the same people who managed to kill her today. Today, no surfeit of Western media depicting angry lawyers railing about Musharraf — as if hewere the problem — can camouflage that fact.

In Pakistan, it is the regime that propounds Western values, such as last year's reform of oppressive, Sharia-based Hudood laws, which made rape virtually impossible to prosecute — a reform enacted despite furious fundamentalist rioting that was, shall we say, less well covered in the Western press. The regime, unreliable and at times infuriating, is our only friend. It is the only segment of Pakistani society capable of confronting militant Islam — though its vigor for doing so is too often sapped by its own share of jihadist sympathizers. 

Yet, we've spent two months pining about its suppression of democracy — its instinct not further to empower the millions who hate us.

For the United States, the question is whether we learn nothing from repeated, inescapable lessons that placing democratization at the top of our foreign policy priorities is high-order folly.