enazir Bhutto is perhaps the most prominent martyr thus far of the 3rd Millennium.  She was willing to risk her life for what she believed—not by surreptitiously launching murderous attacks against others, but by stating in public her beliefs and hopes for her nation, Pakistan.  She had the courage of her convictions.  Although her Islamist murderer blew himself up, can anyone really doubt that she was the more courageous person by far? 

This shows at once that the willingness to kill oneself does not thereby make one a paragon of the virtue of courage.  Indeed, a most poignant truth is that people kill themselves for all sorts of reasons that have nothing at all to do with courage.  Bhutto’s murderer was not a man of courage.  Rather, he was a man who exploited Bhutto’s courage.

I do not suppose for a moment that Benazir Bhutto was without fault.  Indeed, Plato suggests in his magnificent work the Republic that there is something problematic about anyone who wanted to hold public office.  There is no reason to deny that she was interested in obtaining power because she delighted in that sort of thing.  Yet, it must be acknowledged that in her quest for power she did not lose sight of the good of the people.  Indeed it must be acknowledge that the good of the people was fundamentally important to her.  After all, it was a good for which she was willing to put her life on the line.

It is, to be sure, a matter of debate whether democracy, as we know it in Western countries, is suitable for all the world.  Just so, there can be no gainsaying the truth that a society can take its members seriously only insofar as it gives them a choice in who their leaders should be.  There is a kind of affirmation that can be given to the other only insofar as one allows the other to choose.  Whatever her shortcomings might be, Bhutto grasped this truth.  And she was willing to put her life on the line to make this truth a reality for the people of Pakistan. 

Benazir Bhutto’s assassination is a wake-up call to the West.  The success of Islamist terrorists (not to be confused with righteous Muslims) is tied to sufficiently many folks in the West somehow managing to believe that the aims these Islamists are no less legitimate than the aims of democracy.  Those who believe this take the humanity of those under Islamist dominion less seriously than they take their own humanity.  Just as no one thinks for a moment that it is “natural” for a person to want to be a slave, it is plainly absurd to suppose that it is “natural” for people to embrace the domination of Islamists terrorists.  And as Rousseau observed in The Social Contract: Even if a person might choose slavery for himself, he is surely not entitled to choose it for his children.

Bhutto died because she was willing to stand for what she believed in.  She did not die trying to appease all.  She did not die because she was a chameleon who got confused in moving from one audience to another.  She had too much integrity to be a chameleon.

Do we have any politicians like that in the United States who are running for president?  Ms. Clinton?  Mr. Obama?  Mr. Romney?  Mr. McCain?  The sad thing is that it is far from obvious that we do.  How can it be that the country which often claims to be the leader of the free world does not have a presidential candidate who obviously matches Bhutto in terms of integrity and courage?

This is one profound reason why Bhutto’s assassination is a wake-up call. 

Politics without courage and integrity amounts to none other than a form of manipulation.  And insofar as a nation of people are more interested in self-gratification than the integrity of their political candidates, then it follows that such a nation of people has invited its very own manipulation by politicians. 

Benazir Bhutto’s death is a most poignant reminder of two things.  One is that there are, in fact, moral and political truths.  The other is that there are some who above all else are committed to denying these truths and who, to that end, will destroy the very best that life offers.

Some have compared her to Nelson Mandela.  I, on the other hand, think that the more apt comparison is Martin Luther King, Jr. (who was hardly perfect). He saw “the Promised Land”.  He did not get to enter it.  Bhutto returned to Pakistan in the hopes of establishing “the Promise Land”.  She did not get to do so.

King’s dream was fulfilled because sufficiently many in the United States saw a need for change.  Bhutto’s dream will be fulfilled only if sufficiently many of the community of nations will see the need to change. 

And this brings us to another reason why Bhutto’s assassination is a wake-up call.  The idea of a war on terrorism has been mocked by many and dismissed as so much nonsense.  Bhutto had returned to Pakistan in the hopes of making her country a better nation for all of its citizens.  She had returned the spirit of providing equality for all.  Alas, this simple conception of equality, which we in the West take for granted, was seen as a threat by some with a quite different political outlook, namely one which relegated a great many human beings to a position of abject subordination. 

Unless sufficiently many nations of the world stand resolutely opposed to what Bhutto’s murder and inalterably committed to regarding her death as just that, then those who have murdered her will have been given a way out.  If along with nations such as Canada and South Africa and Japan: the European Union and the United States cannot stand unshakably united in their condemnation of those who murdered Bhutto, then by default her assassins will have scored one of the most significant political victories in modern times.  In that case, Bhutto’s death will be in vain.

Of course, she knew that her demise was inevitable.  King did as well.  But an inevitable death as sad as that is need not be one that is in vein.  And it is up to those of us who survive to make it the case that this is not so.  Like King, Bhutto made the ultimate sacrifice; for she advanced her cause with courage and integrity. 

The real question is whether the nations of the world will sanctify her death or whether they will find an excuse to retreat from the reality of the heinous wrongdoing of those who murdered her.  Islamists are counting on the retreat.  For the humanity of the world, especially those in Pakistan I can only hope that the Islamist terrorists are wrong.  Again, righteous Muslims are not to be confused with Islamist terrorists

In a word: By the moral posture that they take towards the evil of the Islamist terrorists who murdered Benazir Bhutto, the nations of the world hold in their hand the fate of the future of the Pakistani people—even the fate of the future of the world.  That is a wake-up call if ever there was one.  And if we take the humanity of the people of Pakistan as seriously as we take our own humanity, it should be manifestly clear that they are counting on us.