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Love Her, Hate HerAnne Applebaum takes readers' questions and comments about Benazir Bhutto.


Posted Thursday, Jan. 3, 2008, at 3:06 PM ET

Slate and Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum was online on Washingtonpost.com on Thursday, Jan. 3, to discuss the Western world's admiration for Benazir Bhutto and the opposite feelings she inspired in Pakistan. An unedited transcript of the chat follows.

Anne Applebaum: Good afternoon everyone—or rather good evening, since where I am (Warsaw, Poland) it's already dinner time and, this being January, the sun set several hours ago. I'm looking forward to being brightened up by your questions though—many thanks in advance, AA

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Bethesda, Md.: To me, your main point was that we need a broader, more informed perspective on foreign countries and their leaders. As you know, this kind of knowledge exists many times over in our bureaucracy, let alone in the think tanks and academia. Why doesn't it have more influence on the people at the top? And though this problem has been much worse under Bush, it still exists in other administrations.

Anne Applebaum: You are absolutely right about the "it exists in many administrations" part of it—Clinton made Yeltsin his best friend, Bush Senior put too much trust in Gorbachev. You are also right about the "plenty of people in the bureaucracy knew plenty about Bhutto" point. I think the problem is partly to do with how White Houses in general absorb and process information: US presidents have so many issues to deal with, it's hardly surprising that they like to simplify matters by substituting personalities for policy. Their bureaucrats can and do send them dozens of briefing papers, but how much simpler it must seem to talk to the man or woman in charge.
Or maybe it's something to do with the American character: We're "people people." We like face to face agreements, handshakes, that sort of thing.

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Richmond, Va.: You know, what I can't understand is why Mrs. Bhutto's son (spurred on by her husband, who has a horrific record of corruption) would be any less volatile (and open to harm) than Mrs. Bhutto herself. In other words, these dynastic families have been accused of (and served time for) all sorts of malfeasance, and still, incredibly, are revered persons, at the head of an "opposition" party, but who are no better in many ways than those who take over by force. Democracy in Pakistan seems to have different meanings than what I know.

Anne Applebaum: The dynastic issue is one worth discussing, particularly as we should be paying more attention to this in American politics. I reckon political dynasties function something like international logos—they are a shortcut, a form of instant recognition. One knows what one will get, sort of, with the Bhuttos, or the Clintons. But they are, as you point out, deeply undemocratic, and can hide all kinds of individual flaws. Not all of the qualities of Mahatma Gandhi were passed to his daughter, but she somehow got credit for them anyway.

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Rochester, N.Y.: Anne, many of your fellow journalists have written touching remembrances of Ms. Bhutto, her early days at Harvard and Oxford, and her indomitable spirit. Did you know her personally? Was she as charming and courageous as these accounts suggest?

Anne Applebaum: I did meet her once, in London, when she was prime minister, probably more than ten years ago. She was by that point imposing and extremely formidable—very large, draped in silks, surrounded by bodyguards, heavily made up, very forthright and direct. As it happened—this was reception—I asked her about the Taliban, something I only remember because of the way she cut me off rather abruptly, claiming she was fighting them as hard as she could—which was, others tell me, not true.

I did not know her in her Oxford days though when I was studying there a few years later, she remained an almost legendary figure, so totally had she dominated the Oxford Union, the university's political debating club. She was certainly an extraordinary person.

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tropicalfolk: This is a very good article by Anne Applebaum. However, there's one big point that Ms. Applebaum missed: For several years, Benazir Bhutto was actively lobbying the Washington establishment (she even hired a professional lobbyist) in order to get the support she needed to return to Pakistan as a savior. The media frenzy about Bhutto's assassination has made many people lose sight of the complex negotiations that took place before she returned to Pakistan.

So, the U.S. agreed to force Bhutto down the throat of Pakistanis, and forced Musharraf to let her land in Pakistan and give her the Prime Minister post. What did Bhutto promised Condi Rice in exchange? It sounds a lot like those Iraqi exiles who assured Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney that American troops would be greeted with songs and flowers in Iraq. Bhutto embodied a corrupt global system that works behind the scenes on behalf of obscure interests.

Anne Applebaum: This is true—but Bhutto was not the only person to have lobbied the Washington establishment in the past few years, or to have hired a professional lobbyist. The fact that she and not some of the others persuaded the administration to help her had, I think, a lot more to do with a kind of growing desperation about what to do about Pakistan.

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Re: "people people": You write "We're 'people people.' We like face-to-face agreements, handshakes, that sort of thing." With all due respect, isn't this just Stephen Colbert-style silliness? And isn't the job of (supposed) foreign policy experts like you to try to move past this rather than to wallow in it?

Anne Applebaum: Actually no—I think it's my job to point it out. It's one of the things that makes American diplomacy different, for example, from the French version.

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McLean, Va.: Why is western media trying to paint Bhutto as a saint when she was nothing close to that? In reality she was a corrupt politician, who should have been tried. I am a Pakistani and I think that her family should return $1.5 billion that she and her husband looted back to the country. Thanks.

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Anne Applebaum is a weekly foreign affairs columnist for Slate and the Washington Post. Previously she was political editor for the Evening Standard and deputy editor for the Spectator magazine, both in London, and was Warsaw correspondent for the Economist. She is the author of Gulag: A History—for which she was awarded a Pulitzer Prize—and Between East and West: Across the Borderlands of Europe.
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