In the Spectator, Stephen Schwartz and Irfan Al-Alawi make a crucial point about the recent violence in Pakistan:

The shift of the global Islamist terror front from Iraq to Afghanistan has less to do with opposition to the Western presence supporting Hamid Karzai than is commonly supposed. The intent of the fundamentalists (claiming to act in the interest of extreme Sunnism) is to radicalise the whole of Pakistan or, failing that, to effect a third partition of the subcontinent. Following the split between Pakistan and India in 1947, and the secession of Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) in 1971, the Pakistani Taleban, as the radicals are increasingly known, will settle for nothing short of full control of the NWFP.

This is not only important in framing the issue for Americans who are queasy about U.S. forces engaging in yet another bloody tangle with suicidal Islamists. It’s also something the current Pakistani government needs to accept and act upon.

Think of this as the latest installment in the rolling debate on the motives of militant Islamists. At the outbreak of the Second Intifada, the argument from nationalism was regularly employed to explain Palestinian suicide attacks on Israel. In some circles it still is, but there seems to be a larger acceptance of Islamism itself as the motivating factor behind the violence. When the Sunni insurgency took off in Iraq, explanations tended to be of the “how would you feel if someone just came into your country and started killing?”-type. It took the actions of non-radical Sunnis who fought back extremists to begin to change the perception in Western minds. Even so, we still read weekly op-eds arguing that the American occupation has served as the catalyst for jihad in Iraq.

Such arguments, attributing rational motives to irrational actors, are irresistible to the anti-war Left, in whose eyes American intervention is always imperial in design and always a provocation of understandable “blowback.” There’s clearly another such argument shaping up in regard to the Pakistan conflict. This argument has not yet reached America with any force, but it will. And the fact that the Pakistani leadership itself is scapegoating American military action inside Pakistan will hasten its arrival. Instead of attempting to placate extremists by denouncing American incursions into the tribal region, President Zardari should be mounting a direct attack against those who wish to turn his country into a static hellhole for reasons of faith.