Michael Fumento

Back in May, Pakistani dictator General Pervez Musharraf, as one paper put it, "insisted that Pakistan was the only country that had a military, political, developmental and administrative strategy to defeat extremism."

"I would tell everyone: Come and learn from us," he said. "We are sitting here knowing exactly what is happening on ground," he said. "You sitting in the West don't know anything. So, don't teach me, come and learn from us. Come and understand the environment. And then decide on what has to be done and what doesn’t have to be done. We are doing more than any other country in the world."

My! How things have changed! First there was that nasty incident concerning the Taliban Red Mosque right in the capital of Islamabad. Now Musharraf's deal with the Taliban and other militants in western Pakistan has fallen completely apart, with the tribesmen saying they were declaring war on Pakistan. Mind you, for the most part the Taliban simply ignored the deal anyway. Musharraf promised to leave them alone so long as they didn't use the territory as an entry point into Afghanistan and so long as they were peaceful towards the Pakistanis as well. Naturally, the deal didn't stop a single Taliban from going to Afghanistan. Some people just might call that a deal breaker, but not Musharraf. But now they're attacking the Pakistanis as well.

Meanwhile a new National Intelligence Estimate report and another report from the National Counterterrorism Center states that al Queda has practically rebuilt itself in northwest Pakistan because we're stupid enough to honor a border Musharraf can't control.

Musharraf is a malevolent buffoon. He helped build up and sustain the Taliban in Afghanistan (though he now denies it) but cannot now control them in any way. The only lessons we have to learn from him are negative ones. As to western Pakistan, we have to be quite clear that since he cannot control the area, that it's basically not part of his country, it's happy hunting grounds for us. We will enter it whenever it suits our purpose and we will kill and capture any enemy of the United States. If Musharraf doesn't like it, he can vent by selling more nuclear technology to rogue states.