A Time For Everything

Today, amidst the usual turmoil and trouble due to upcoming elections, something has come to add to the chaos in a frightening way. The assasination of former Pakistani PM Benazir Bhutto has already had consequences felt everywhere. In an attack chalked up to rising insurgency, questions remain. The US seems to be taking an approach designed to keep everything relating to them peaceful and letting the rest fall as it may. Now, there are times when this philosophy is appropriate; this is not one of those times. The United States have been so busy policing the rest of the world that they have neither the resources, the will, nor the ability to judge when such assistance is really beneficial. The most the US has managed to do is express a wish for the elections to continue as planned, rather than aid the investigation and, if necessary, rethink their financial support, depending on the outcome of said investigation. With Bhutto dead and Sharif still refusing to participate, two out of three candidates are out. The boycott was proposed to promote legitimacy. The only thing different now is that Musharraf and his backers in the West can claim a sense of security, albeit shallow, by changing its focus from a resistance movement to an unfortunate happening that is meant to be mourned for a time and forgotten.
Order must be restored to the region. With rising militancy and acts of terrorism being joined now by increasing religious tensions in next-door India, something must change, but not the way we have been trying to do it. We have focused our attentions as a war in the Middle East, namely Iraq and Afghanistan. We must now focus our attentions diplomatically on the rest of the world, or this thing we've ignored will grow until it forces itself to our attention. We must stop this before it manifests in a way that we have no control over. This issue is a new Philip of Macedonia threatening our welfare, and we must unite against it, but not in war. If we ignore it, or go about it by the sword as in the Crusades, we will do nothing but destroy ourselves. There is a time for such things and it has not come yet. Before we rush in and dip our hands in the blood we spilled we must understand why, and when. War is never the best, only the last.

-Modern Diogenes-