Benazir Bhutto need not have lost her life to such savagery. This is the greatest tragedy of all. In my view, she is currently the most prominent victim of the Cult of Denial and Wishful Thinking so ardently adopted these last years by the U.S. State Department and intelligence establishments, and ennobled by the CFR-Brzezinski-Gates Iran report, its spawn, the Baker Iraq Study Group report, and, most recently, the odious Iran NIE. She will not be the last victim. When people responsible for government policy live in denial of reality, especially patently dangerous reality, and act on the basis of the fantasy they have constructed in order to indulge and preserve that denial, that wishful thinking, disaster always, always ensues. Such a denial of reality always harvests a multitude of victims. Reality will come and kill you every time. One need not look far back in history to find a host of proofs of this axiom.

Benazir Bhutto, aside from anything else, was a deeply courageous woman whose inspirational leadership created new hope for the future of her country. What she may have achieved for her people if given another chance to govern is a page of Pakistan’s future that will remain unwritten. Her assassination leaves us with a question that must be asked. Have we so many in the world of her mettle and brilliance that even one should be allowed to be foolishly, needlessly sacrificed on the alter of the Cult of Wishful Thinking? Did it not register in the wee minds of any of the intellectual wonders in Washington who hatched the plan of having her return to Pakistan to run for office, just how much the Islamist/Taliban/Al-Qaeda factions hated her? They’ve tried to kill Musharraf, what, nine times, so far? And the Islamists hated Bhutto a thousand, thousand times more than Musharraf. Convincing her to go back to Pakistan and run for office was a death sentence. In a just world, the entire State Department establishment, starting with Condi Rice, and much of the “intelligence” community, would be fired. Were I Celestial Sovereign of the Universe, unemployment would be the least of their worries — though nothing could compensate the world, Pakistan, or her family for the loss of this brave woman. However, in this deluded administration, who has the guts or the wisdom to chuck these bureaucrats out en masse and save the world? And, yes, I say “save the world” advisedly. Thus far, their rash, delusion-based démarches have done nothing but bring the world closer to a war that would bring planetary annihilation. A nuclear trifecta has been empowered by this and other gross diplomatic missteps: first North Korea, then Iran, and now add Pakistan. What we have here is a failure to communicate with reality. If we don’t take heed and mend our ways, it will kill us all.
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* There are some wonderful exceptions to this bleak prospect.

• Mark Steyn just always gets it right.

• Andrew C. McCarthy has the right stuff.

• Eli Lake in The New York Sun has a scoop about the possible assassins.

• More about the assassins from Daveed Gartenstein-Ross at the Counterterrorism Blog.

• Counterrorism Blog has an excellent series of posts.

• As is so agonizingly often the case, The Washington Post begins to get it semi-almost-right, but then veers off into platitudes without drawing the obvious conclusions to its own reporting.

But as I’ve been pointing out ALL YEAR LONG …

Pakistan, the only Islamic country with nuclear weapons, is an accident waiting to happen.

I don’t recommend tunnel vision, actually.