America's Most Dysfunctional Ally

Of all the nations that have enjoyed a spam of orchestrated “outrage” over a soft-core pornographer’s unwitting experiment with Orientalist minstrelsy, Pakistan is the least deserving of Washington's patience or indulgence. Five thousand protestors besieged or stormed the US Embassy in Islamabad on Friday, and at least 19 died in armed rampages in Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar, while cinemas, fast-food joints and a church were firebombed. This was the foreseeable consequence of the government's consecration of a national holiday, “Day of Love for the Prophet,” to counteract Innocence of Muslims, an amateur film produced by an ex-convict Egyptian Copt in California. Pakistan may have publicly called for “peaceful” protests, but given its not-so-secretive collusion with reactionary Salafists and Jihadists, any fool can see that it furnished a state license for murder and mayhem.