Another in the Long Volley of Shots Heard 'Round the World

In the next four years, some 16 nations lost more than 10 million lives, twice that many were wounded, the entire Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed, Germany was humiliated in defeat (laying the groundwork for the rise of Hitler, World War II and the Holocaust) and America was launched into world prominence.

Princip's pistol also led to the creation of Yugoslavia, which led to the destruction of Yugoslavia, which led to another war involving ethnic Serbs in Bosnia, which led to mass murder of Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica, which led to U.S. troops landing in a place called Tuzla, which led to war crimes tribunals and the imprisonment and subsequent death of the Serbian president who had started the war on ethnic nationalism.

Moving south, if one wants the short course on why peace in the Middle East is so elusive, just look up "Nobel Peace Prize," followed by "assassination."

Egyptian President Anwar Sadat won that award in 1978, along with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, for their peace agreement, the Camp David Accords. That lasted for three years, until Muslim fundamentalists stormed a parade route and shot Sadat to death.

Thirteen years later, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (and colleague Shimon Peres) shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Rabin's mortal enemy, Palestinian Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat. The two men had, mostly in secret, brokered a peace agreement (the Oslo Accords) that promised to have a transformative effect on the Middle East. But it was largely an agreement between two men, not two nations. One Israeli law student thought that Rabin, a soldier who had defended Israel almost his entire adult life, was "giving our country to the Arabs." He took it upon himself to shoot and kill Rabin.

The Oslo Accords withered and died.

And, of course, there is the United States, where roughly one out of every 11 presidents have been assassinated, where Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Martin Luther King followed the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi and was, of course, shot in the head at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis.

American assassination has been of titanic import. Lincoln's changed the course of the country. His assassination spot at Ford's Theater is a national landmark, and there is the Lincoln Monument on the Mall, not to mention his likeness on the penny and the $5 bill. John F. Kennedy's assassination . . . oh. You've heard.

It's also been almost inconsequential. Just 16 years after Lincoln was killed, James Garfield was assassinated at a train station a few hundred yards from Ford's Theatre. That building, never designated anything, was torn down 99 years ago. The site eventually became the National Gallery of Art and today, not even a plaque marks the spot. The sole reminder of the event is Garfield's unobtrusive statue at the base of Capitol Hill.

In 1998, the U.S. Justice Department published something called the "Exceptional Case Study Project," as part of a threat assessment guide for law enforcement officials. The study reviewed the historical record back to 1835 and surveyed "the thinking and behavior of all 83 persons known to have attacked or approached to attack a prominent public official or figure in the United States from 1949 to 1996."

They fit no one profile, authors Robert A. Fein and Bryan Vossekuil found. Some had political beliefs, some were just nuts. The serious ones kept their mouths shut: "None of the 43 assassins and attackers communicated a direct threat to the target before their attack."

And some, perhaps like the person or people who killed Bhutto yesterday, wanted to "save the country or the world; to fix a world problem."

How seldom it works out that way.

Researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report.