Junaid Shah
It is becoming more clear that this attack originated within Pakistan. That does not mean that it was an official act of the government elected by the Pakistani people. It does not even mean that it was planned at the highest level by the ISI. However, the people in Pakistan who planned this attack and set it in motion need to be found and punished.
The alternative is the risk of war between nuclear armed India and nuclear armed Pakistan. The end result of such a war is likely to be a destroyed Pakistan and a severely damaged India. No rational person wants such a war. However, there seem to be an organized group of people in Pakistan who’s thinking is based on a different frame of reference.
At a minimum those people need to be removed from government power and in many cases they need to be hanged. Given the threat their actions have posed to the continued existence of the Pakistani state, these actions have to be taken swiftly and it is more important to catch the guilty than to spare the innocent who merely look guilty. A nuclear war is going to kill a lot more innocent people than an overzealous prosecutor. That is really the choice that the Pakistani people face. Either hunt down and hang the few dozen people who are guilty of setting in motion this slaughter of innocent people or choose to see millions of innocent people incinerated in a war that Pakistan ultimately loses.
The correct path, both from a moral and a practical standpoint, seems obvious to me but the people of Pakistan will have to make that choice and live with the consequences.
