The Blueprint

Hold your breath. The last time Al-Qaeda assassinated a Muslim leader anywhere near as pro-American as Thursday’s savage slaughter of Benazir Bhutto was two days before 9/11.

On September 9, 2001, Al-Qaeda operatives assassinated Ahmed Shah Masoud, an Afghan veteran of the anti-Soviet jihad and the charismatic and relatively pro-Western leader of the Northern Alliance, the only organized alternative to the Taliban.

In retrospect, it would appear that bin Laden ordered the assassination of Massoud to be carried out right before 9/11 because he realized that the attack would focus American might on Afghanistan, so it was clearly in his interest to eliminate any rivals who would be likely to support an American intervention.

The assassination of Bhutto follows this blueprint seamlessly. If, God forbid, the ensuing pattern mirrors that of the Massoud assassination, a catastrophic attack on America will be carried out in short order by Al-Qaeda, harbored now primarily in western Pakistan rather than Afghanistan.

Bin Laden, fully aware that the American military, in such an event, would focus on Pakistan, would have every motive to eliminate Pakistan’s equivalent of Massoud, the one person who may have worked with the Americans without losing legitimacy in the eyes of her people.

But Bhutto was a much more important person than was Massoud. And Pakistan is a much more dangerous country than is Afghanistan. And, if history repeats itself, the imminent attack will be much worse than 9/11. Hold your breath.