PAKISTAN ON THE BRINK? - AT 7:41 A.M. ET:  As a nation we tend to ignore what's happening in Pakistan.  It's too confusing to summarize.  We don't know the players very well.  Pakistan never attacked us.  But Tony Blankley, writing at Real Clear Politics, has done a fine reporting piece warning that Pakistan may be on the brink of collapse, or takeover by Islamists.  If it happened, Islamists would be in control of Pakistani nukes:

Last week, David Kilcullen, a former Australian army officer who was Gen. Petraeus' senior counterinsurgency strategist and is now a consultant to the Obama White House, said Pakistan could collapse within months.

"We have to face the fact that if Pakistan collapses, it will dwarf anything we have seen so far in whatever we're calling the war on terror now," he said.

Kilcullen said time is running out for international efforts to pull both countries back from the brink. "You just can't say that you're not going to worry about al-Qaida taking control of Pakistan and its nukes," he said. "The Kabul tail was wagging the dog." He described the war in Afghanistan as a campaign to defend a reconstruction program. "It's not really about al-Qaida," he continued. "Afghanistan doesn't worry me. Pakistan does." He said that maybe we can manage Afghanistan and Richard Holbrooke can cut an international deal, but there is also a chance that Washington will fail to stabilize Afghanistan, that Pakistan will collapse, and that al-Qaida will end up running what he called "Talibanistan."

COMMENT:  Will President Obama take the necessary action to reverse this alarming trend?  How can he when the left wing of his party is even opposing the small things he's done up to now. 

I suspect that, if things deteriorate, the leftists and their friends in the press will simply spout the line that even a radicalized Pakistan is "entitled" to have nuclear weapons, and that we must respect cultural change.  After all, we have nukes.  The Israelis have them.  India has them.  We must be more tolerant.  Believe me, if things get bad, that line is coming.

April 15, 2009