Benazir Bhutto, R.I.P.

I try not to get involved in commenting on matters outside this country, but I have Asian friends who understandably are very concerned about what is happening, and likely to happen, in Pakistan following the assassination of Ms Bhutto. Both the US President and our Prime Minister have stressed the importance of not allowing this terrible act to derail the hoped-for democratic process in that country. And yet..... It seems to me that you cannot have democracy (and as mentioned in previous posts, by this we basically mean the Western parliamentary model) unless and until you are prepared to lose. Because the process inevitably involves winners and losers. And if your immediate reaction to losing is to go out and try and kill the other lot, I don't see how it can possibly work. Before you can begin to consider putting that model into effect, you have to be dealing with the sort of people who will swear and kick the cat if they lose, but who will then buckle down and put their energies into trying to win next time - and frankly all the current evidence suggests that, with or without the baleful influence of "Al-Quaeda", at present a significant proportion of the Pakistani people are not of that frame of mind. So are our efforts to "bring democracy to Pakistan" actually helping to create the problem rather than solving it?