Registan.net

That and other pearls of wisdom, courtesy neocon extraordinaire (and apparent Pashtun expert) Mark Steyn. His reasoning?

a lot of us regard the creation of Pakistan as one of the worst decisions of British imperial policy ever. Lord Mountbatten in 1947 should never have agreed to it. Pakistan’s founder, Jinnah, would have been dead within the year, and who knows then how much momentum there would have been. But in a sense, it developed as the complete opposite of India. India is pluralist, secular, progressive, modern, and Pakistan, instead, has regressed with each generation to the point now where as Stanley [Kurtz] points out, what were hitherto relatively modern cities, are now taking on the characteristics of the sort of tribal cave lands, as it were, in their political character. And this is a problem not just for Pakistan, but for where those jihadists export their populations to, which is places like Scandinavia and Britain and Canada.

There is merit to this, so he doesn’t deserve placement alongside Charles Krauthammer and David Ignatius. However, Steyn falls prey not just to the tendency of both political stripes of needlessly stereotype and generalize from the Pashtuns, but also to demonize the State Department while not decrying its consistent defunding and defanging under the last three administrations.

Perhaps a good dollop of self-awareness is in order for our pundit class. Because the vast majority of them, even those who are traditionally of high quality, lack it.

In fact, this makes for a good contrast with Péter Marton’s excellent look at political factionalism in Pakistan, and “Primary Red” contention that Ms. Bhuttos brutal murder might not mean anything at all. I don’t know if that would be more or less tragic. Regardless, both essays are much more worth reading.

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