Word: secularism
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Outsiders want in; they fill Midtown's hotels and clot its traffic. Secular pilgrims, they trek to the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center (and to its fellow firs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and at Lincoln Center). They window-shop on Fifth Ave. - a promenade that remains the city's most bustling theatrical experience. And they see a holiday show - for the kids, and for the vestigial child in most adults...
...only ones who gain from this," says Anthony Zinni, a retired four-star Marine general who served as chief of the U.S. Central Command - responsible for Pakistan - from 1997 to 2000. Zinni rattled off reasons for al-Qaeda's wanting Bhutto dead, including her commitment to democracy, her secular views, the blowback it will create for Musharraf, and her gender. Beyond that, Zinni says al-Qaeda - making marginal progress in Afghanistan, backsliding in Iraq, and rebuffed in Somalia - is looking for a new battlefield. "I really think they're trying to ignite Pakistan into the kind of chaos they need...
...immediate reaction in the United Sates will be visceral: al-Qaeda killed Bhutto because she was too secular and too close to the United States, an agent of American imperialism. It will be of some comfort that the front lines of terrorism are thousands of miles away; that we are fighting "them" there rather than in lower Manhattan; that there are heroes like Bhutto ready to fight and die for democracy, moderation and rationality...
That was too much for the wild card Republican libertarian Ron Paul, who warned of "fascism ... carrying a Cross." (Huckabee's reply: Sometimes a bookshelf is just a bookshelf.) But then, the line between sacred and secular has always been blurry at this time of year--check out all the White House Christmas trees. The Iowa situation is regrettable because it's so arbitrary and unnecessary. There's no good reason for the campaigns to be crammed into the week reserved for family and faith. It's just the sad result of jealous competition among states over the chance...
...nation. After a decade-long civil war that has claimed 13,000 lives and prompted mass protests in 2006 against the autocratic rule of King Gyanendra, the Maoists have been brought into the political mainstream, via a peace agreement that would turn the oft-romanticized Hindu kingdom into a secular republic representing the true social and ethnic diversity of Nepal's 27 million people. The self-styled People's Liberation Army agreed to retire to rural camps such as this one, to begin preparing their fighters for integration into a new National Army...