Word: secularized
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...most campaigns, New Year's will involve a lot of work (unlike Christmas, it's a secular holiday, which gives candidates a free pass to stay on the job) - they'll be entering the final sprint to the Jan. 3 caucuses - though most events on Jan. 1 start noticeably late in the day, just in case. Several campaigns considered throwing big bashes with marquee entertainment, but they scratched their plans, worried that glitzy parties wouldn't seem very "Iowan" and that the crowds who turn out on New Year's Eve may not be inclined to come back on caucus...
...members have begun to contemplate who should take over as party leader, a consensus has emerged that the person needs to be a Bhutto, a name that retains incredible power and vote-winning influence in secular Pakistan despite - or perhaps because of - the tragedies and controversies the family has faced. It is not the first time a young Bhutto has taken over from a dead parent. "This was also the situation when Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was murdered," says Babar Awan, a PPP Senator and close ally of Benazir. "Benazir was a teenager, she was a student at Harvard...
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...