This Is What I Get for Reading Georgie Anne Geyer

Pakistan is doomed because some bearded men want to run madrassas and cut off the hands of thieves? Note to Geyer and the people who clean up her first drafts: our nominal friends cut off the hands of thieves, keep women off the road, even get cops to beat the shit out of people who owe them money. It's evil; we tolerate it because we benefit. There was an open insurrection in Swat, with de facto rule by the Pakistani Taliban, before the cease-fire -- there were beheadings before the cease-fire. There is calm now. What do you want?

That said, Pakistan is not going to fall. Anywhere but the Pakistani equivalent of Winnetka there is civil society and the rule of law. (It's funny how the right loves the American outback, is all about self-rule, and can't stomach the sight of Islamic self-rule.) Pakistanis themselves are pissed about the truce, because they, like you and I, Georgie, have television. Also, the Pakistani army is going to pick its battles -- they won't let the bomb walk into the hands of bearded men.

Calm down. Swat was not destroyed by the February cease-fire. The Taliban cannot convert by force a nation of 200 million people...this would be like a violent insurgency of Jehovah's Witnesses getting self-rule in South Dakota and suddenly, within six months, taking over New York. Sufi Muhammad knows he'd be laughed out of town...