http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/12/17/pakistan-peshawar-afghanistan-terrorism-ttp/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=*Editors+Picks&utm_campaign=2014_EditorsPicks_Promo+NYU17%2F12#
"Pakistan’s military is learning from its mistakes in the past. But it confuses tactical with strategic gains. Pakistani TV channels, perhaps encouraged by the military, interviewed jihadi leaders such as Fazlur Rehman Khalil and Hafiz Saeed to get their response to Tuesday’s carnage. They were presented as legitimate religious leaders. But even though they condemned the school attacks, they regularly advocate violence against targets outside of Pakistan and are not among the country’s top clerics. It is but another reminder that the government in Islamabad has failed to effectively delegitimize jihadi violence against the state. Of course, that’s in part due to a long history of jihadism as an instrument of state policy. No remedy will be forthcoming until the nation’s leaders wake up to the reality that this double-edged sword vitiates the very idea of a sovereign nation-state, creates monsters that threaten Pakistan’s existence, and encourages Pakistan’s neighbors to give the country a taste of its own medicine.
Military operations alone won’t make Pakistan safer. For the government to give its citizens the peace they deserve and earn respect in the international community, the business of jihad will have to come to a close."
when i posted on this topic originally i'm not sure i really had a point . . . if i did though, this article crystallizes it into something much less offensive. hopefully.
i mean, sure, we can feel sorry it happened and "unite" ourselves against killing children by sharing a graphic on social media or something equally meaningless (as if we really needed to unite on that), then proceed to forget about it.
. . . or we can take this opportunity to have a difficult discussion about a complicated issue, and observe that the national reaction there has the potential to turn into a cultural wake up call.