Day Seventy-Three

6/13

The Book: Daughter of Destiny by Benazir Bhutto

ISBN: 0-06-167268-2

Suggested By: Sissy Vaughn

Where: Home

When: 7:30-8P

Music: None

Company: The Family

Pages: 149-205 (56)

The Lead In: It is troubling that how the US constantly sacrifices its principles concerning human rights when the contradict the political or economic goals of the government. Isn’t our morality more important than anything else? Why on earth do we lower ourselves below the level of our conscience? Or maybe this is all a sham and we are no better than our actions. Aristotle claimed that a man is what he does, not what he says he is. Can that be applied to countries as well?

The 411 on the 55: PM Bhutto was executed and the country descended into chaos, all overseen by a military government, ruled by Zia. Today’s reading, for the most part, centered on the experiences of Benazir and the other members of the PPP: torture, exposure to the elements, restriction of medical treatment, etc.

A plain was highjacked, and the PPP was blamed. To extract confessions, Zia turns to pulling out toenails and starving prisoners. The effort failed to implicate the PPP or the Bhutto family. 

Today’s reading ends with a mention of US foreign policy. Because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Reagan administration offered military hardware and money to Pakistan. In exchange, the Pakistani government would allow the US to funnel arms and supplies to the Afghani resistance. Bhutto questions why the US didn’t look into the human rights violations going on in Pakistan. And so should we all. Why?

Line of the Day: “Now Zia was successfully banking on the presence of the Russians right on Pakistan’s border to overshadow America’s concern about Pakistan’s nuclear programme.” pg 204

The Fact on the Fiction: Reading into the Soviet war in Afghanistan is interesting. The government of Afghanistan actually requested the Soviet army into its country to fight against an uprising of “mujahideen” (someone involved in a jihad). The US picked the resistance because of the Soviet influence. Wikipedia