She Was Asking For It
Tonight I watched Pervez Musharraf say on 60 Minutes that Benazir Bhutto was solely responsible for her death. Apparently even the guy with the gun and the guy with the bomb were blameless. Now I’m content to assign her a fair share of the blame for bad crowd-security practice. Maybe it was even unwise to hold in-person rallies rather than work through radio, TV, DVD distribution and so on. But you’d still think the murderers bear some of the onus too.
However, I learn from Making Light that Musharraf is simply following the principles laid down in the Pakistani rape law he himself helped perpetuate.
Comment by Dave W. —
January 7, 2008 @ 7:25 am
I am not sure that is a fair comparison, Mr. Henley. Did you see the movie Silence Of the Lambs? It is an okay movie, and it is really excellent when they play that old Fall song.
Assuming you did see the movie, lets say FBI trainee Clarice Starling decided to go into Dr. Hannibal Lechter’s cell to discuss with him strategies for catching notorious murderer Buffalo Bill. When she is in the cell, Dr. Lechter kills and eats her. Who would be responsible for her death legally? Morally?
Now, what happened with Bhutto is not exactly like my Silence of the Lambs hypo, but it is at least as much like that as it is fairly comparable to the kinds of rape laws you cite. I don’t think that police in a civilized society can say, “we generally can’t protect — so you are responsible for crimes against you if you leave the house.” OTOH, I think there are limited places that the police can tell you not to go and if you go there then you do become responsible for crimes committed against you. Fortunately, this doesn’t come up much in everyday life, but the Bhutto thingee was not everyday life.
Of course, it is gigantically frustrating that the Pakistani strongman is not interested in investigating his own security forces for misfeasance and/or nonfeasance. However, we Americans are in no position to get on a high horse about that. We don’t even know who killed Pat Tillman or how the admitted coverups occurred. And we don’t even care. Have I mentioned what fate I would have befall Erik Prince lately?