Deviating from the script

Thinking it was safe, Newsweek published its 2007 obituary of "Famous in Life, Noted in Passing" in its January 7, 2008 issue, everyone from Brooks Astor to Jack Valenti. Who knew that former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan would render the tally unprescient by her December 27th assassination? The fact of it underscores what we all know but like to pretend we don't --- that history and the future will never proceed according to script.

You can dispatch Condoleezza Rice on her if-it's-Tuesday-it-must-be-Belgium globe trotting, you can throw $10 billion in aid to Musharraf in the war against terrorism, as the U.S. Congress did. And some guy with a will and a way will still snake through the crowd in Rawalpindi and change the equation of power in the Middle East.

What next? Will the anti-government unrest ignited by the murder escalate? Will a broad-based coalition government rise from the ashes to tackle extremists? Will the centrifugal forces on regional divisions worsen? What will happen to Karachi, that hotbed of violence and power base of the Bhutto family?

"Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation. When his breath departs he returns to the earth; on that very day his plans perish" (Psalm 146:3,4).