"Kyle Boatright" wrote:

The islamists, on the other hand, particularly the ones who have gone over
to the 99.99% extreme of their religion actually believe that dying is a
good thing if it is done in a way that kills infidels. If those people
ever get the bomb, I think they will use it if they get a chance.

That is why the situation in Pakistan is potentially far more dangerous than
either N. Korea or Iran.

Pakistan is a nuclear power *now*, and is only a quick coup away from having
radical Islamists in power. What will the U. S. do if we wake up tomorrow
to find Pervez Musharraf overthrown and the Mullahs in charge? Certainly,
our options will be restricted by the effort being wasted in Iraq, and the
re-emerging Taliban problem that that useless war has permitted to rise in
Afghanistan.

At a time when we need to be light on our feet, we are stuck in a tar-pit:

"We are not controlling events in Iraq. Events in Iraq are controlling us.
We are the puppet; the street gangs of Baghdad and Basra are the
puppet-masters, aided and abetted by an unsavory assortment of confidence
men, bazaar traders, scheming clerics, ethnic front men, and Iranian agents.
With all our wealth and power and idealism, we have submitted to become the
plaything of a rabble, and a Middle Eastern rabble at that. [ ] The
lazy-minded evangelico-romanticism of George W. Bush, the bureaucratic will
to power of Donald Rumsfeld, the avuncular condescension of Dick Cheney, and
the reflexive military deference of Colin Powell combined to get us into a
situation we never wanted to be in, a situation no self-respecting nation
ought to be in, a situation we don't know how to get out of."

-John Derbyshire, National Review Online, June 12th, 2006


--
Dan
C172RG at BFM