Pakistan
If you want to appreciate being American, go to Pakistan. This is not to speak
ill of Pakistan or its people, as they no more deserve generalization than
anyone else, but Americans who haven't seen Pakistan really can't understand
what it's like. And they now have nuclear weapons.It is absurd to imagine that the odd missile strike will somehow keep or put Pakistan on this or that straight and narrow, indeed experience no less than biblical passage indicates that such violence only begets more violence. We've tried supporting dictatorship there, we've tried acquiescing in nuclear proliferation, we've tried extraterritorial robot killing, but insofar as we may have any productive control of events in Pakistan, rest assured it lies elsewhere. I know this reality doesn't mesh with the military-industrial party line, but there it is.
Pakistan and India may perhaps become the nuclear crash test dummies of the future. Hopefully a nuclear war between them will remain contained, and the rest of us will get to see what one looks like when both sides are armed. And maybe we'll decide that that's enough of that, though we'll all wish in retrospect we had learned it some easier way.
addendum:
(2/19/08) It looks like Pakistan may have a somewhat peaceful change of power.
You go, Pakistan.
