The other war in the Af-Pak frontier

War is the last refuge of failing states, but in Pakistan it often seems to be the first hobby of men who confuse uniforms with omniscience. When politics decays, legitimacy thins, and yesterday’s “strategic assets” develop the bad manners of independent thought, Rawalpindi reaches for the same old script: bomb a frontier, hold a briefing, and pray that smoke can pass for doctrine. It is a touching faith in language, really. If enough dead civilians are described as “infrastructure,” perhaps history itself will agree to be redacted. The bombing of a rehabilitation hospital in Kabul, with Afghan officials claiming 400 dead, should have ended at least one moral farce: the idea that mass civilian death becomes tolerable once it is […]