The difficulty with your an my interpretation of who is who in Afghani and Paki politics is the inseperable religious over and under tones. As a decidedly Muslim state, Pak is standing with multiple interpretations/misunderstandings of what law to be lawless about, and what cause gives cause to lay claim.

IOW at any given moment of time in Pakmis-under-stand, none agrees with everyone else. The extremes say submit or die, and so kill you for what ever reason they can determine. Everyone is left scratching their head and/or tail trying to figure out what none will tolerate.

And yes, it is as simple as all of that.

But as long as you brought up sanctimony, there’s a great example of it on the tree-hugging thread. Someone felt moved to announce her disapproval (as if it mattered) of someone else’s plan to retire in peace and quiet, and in the process took a few bitchy little potshots at his “caregiver” wife and called his spirituality a “tarted-up” excuse for cowardice. Anyone you know?

That said, the last thing this fractured country needs right now is red, white and blue vigilantes, no matter how righteous they believe their motivations to be. Anyone who wants to bear arms and wear colors for the sake of his country should go enlist in the armed forces. That’s what they’re there for, and they are in need of volunteers, in case no-one’s noticed.

We should have had the NRA organize Citizen’s Militias to guard every public building.

If they were Organized Militia, they’d be National Guard.

Unorganized Militia still exist, (all able bodied males between the ages of 17 and 45 who are not in the organized militia) but the NRA has no authority to call them up. They call themselves up, like Flight 93, or wait for the governor or president.

The American Federation of Government Employees representing the workers of the General Services Administration’s Public Buildings Service’s Federal Protective Service would not tolerate the competition anyway. They pay enough “campaign contributions” to ‘rat politicians to prevent such things.

A whole lot of things former Bush supporters now excoriate him for failing to do were never within his power to accomplish.

First, we should recognize the fact that the concept of the “axis of evil” is still relevant regarding those states which still do openly support terrorism: c.f. Iran’s support of Hezbollah.

Second, we should require a putatively allied state such as Pakistan to do whatever is required to dismantle and destroy terrorist networks in its own country. It should not be considered enough to mount ineffectual internal counter-terrorism efforts, claim certain areas and populations are at once too difficult to engage and yet remain protected under the umbrella of Pakistani sovereignty and are thus considered off limits to outside action or incursion by other interested States.

We should make it clear to the Pakistani government that our safety and its own continued survival depend on a close and entirely open alliance against the terrorist extremists. It’s not entirely clear to me why we should not also require as a near-term condition of further ongoing material support that our own fighting and/or intelligence assets oversee and incorporate internally with Pakistan’s own.

Disagree. I think Pakistan has managed to foster a triple-pronged terrorist threat: (1) they are hiding bin Laden and failed Al Queda terrorists from Iraq, (2) their military and ISI are a pack of terrorists in and of themselves playing political games with India over Kashmir, and (3) the disaffected middle-class Muslim youth that we see elsewhere around the world who really are not part of Al-Queda but just want to take a jaunt for a weekend and see if they can kill their very own American soldier, or failing that, go kill a few meebly Indians who won’t shoot back and blame it on Kashmir.

Between these three prongs, the majority of Pakistani’s *must* have claimed a personal affiliation so there cannot be any such thing as a “moderate Muslim Pakistani”.

There were three disparate groups in Iraq, too, and it still remains to be seen if they will be able to come together and make their country work. If possible, I think Pakistan is even worse in its divisiveness than Iraq has been.

I wonder if any one person — a “prince” — has control of Pakistan’s nukes, or if different groups have claimed different nuclear sites for their own.

so that even if they don’t have the knowledge or technology to shoot it off, bin Laden and his Al-Queda group (for example) can claim to the unlearned Pakistani’s who are sheltering him that he, too, has his very own nuclear bomb as befits a great leader and Muslim sheikh. While Bhutto may claim several, and Gul a couple of more, and I’ll bet even Dr. Khan and/or Musharref may have one or two baby ones hidden under their beds for old times’ sake.

We should have searched every mosque in the country, and put them all on permanent wiretaps. Instead we had hysteria over wiretapping communications that don’t even originate in this country and made it Racist to use Obama’s middle name.

We should have had the NRA organize Citizen’s Militias to guard every public building. Instead, we had more attempts at gun control.

There are a zillon things we should have done, but months after the WTC fell and long before we fixed the hole in the Pentagon the FAA mailed out a new student pilot’s license to Mohammed Friggin’ Atta!

Sadly we are greatly hampered by political correctness even now. If we can’t even name our enemy, how effective can we be in facing and fighting him? Every time another atrocity is committed, apologists in our midst rise up to point out that not every Muslim is a terrorist. Oddly, these are usually the same people who won’t trust their fellow citizens with firearms because one random nut or criminal shoots somebody. Obviously we no more need to concentrate on the majority of nonviolent Muslims than we need concentrate on the even greater majority of nonviolent firearms owners, yet the appeasers among us insist on focusing on both groups and ignoring the perpetrators.