Good point about Pakistan Strangelet.
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That's the deal breaker and it boils down to that simple truth. [Pakistan is a] vastly less stable regime with nuclear war heads that actually exist, dealing with its own internal civil war, filled to the brim with the crazies that escaped from Afghanistan, the same people that trained and supported the 9/11 terrorists?
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I've asked myself the same thing, and presume these things don't have a single answer, but rather the case is made by the weight of several factors (same with Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan)
Pakistan is quite clearly less stable, but do their leader and our leaders have a certain understanding (be it on security, trade, whatever) the details of which would shed light on those reasons for the softly softly approach? A problem there is that the fraught relationship between ourselves and the Iranian leader appears to be a consequence of our pre-existing attitude to Iran rather than a cause of it - though these things quickly become feedback loops.
Is it a strategic move to tread gently with Pakistan by virtue of the fact that it
is so potentially, and literally, explosive? That they already have the weapons and/or have already reached a level of instability? After all, treading carefully may not sound like the style of the Bush administration, but they were willing to do it with North Korea. (Or maybe not, since NK was added to the axis of evil, while Pakistan - to my recollection - wasn't.)
Is it a factor that Pakistan is the country of origin of the bulk of the UK's (and Europe's?) Muslim immigrants, many of whom have families living there or shuttling back and forth all the time - and going to war with that country (or rhetoric leading to it) would pose a serious threat to the stability of much of Western Europe? You go to war with a country, a million of whose relatives are living in your own country - that doesn't sound like a good idea to me.
Not saying I believe these to be the reasons - just ideas.
And for the record, the conspiraloon in me still wonders about the relationship between our intelligence agencies, their intelligence agency, and al Qaeda - particularly with regard to the killing of Daniel Pearl and the funding of 9/11 - but time has dampened my appetite to get back into any of that stuff.
Does Iran pose a bigger threat to the stability of western economies given its significant role in the export of oil? Maybe that's another one that shifts the balance...