Hitting Close to a Former Home

Al Qaeda has gotten to Lahore and Islamabad faster than it's been able to get to L.A. or Iowa City. The Model Town section of Lahore is a small area where my mother grew up, a place I'd often visited during my youth.

Pakistanis appear exhausted by how they've been pulled into the war on terror. They blame Musharraf for bowing to Washington's demand for a heavy-handed response in the anarchic northwest frontier that borders Afghanistan. Many say that Pakistan should negotiate with the militants, even though neoconservative dogma maintains that talking with terrorists is folly. Many Pakistanis just want everyone to go away -- the U.S., the Taliban, the countless Afghan refugees who trampled their land in the wake of "Charlie Wilson's War."

We as Americans will need to understand, in coming years, that we have to take seriously the voices of those people who are far closer to the carnage than we, those people who face a far greater threat each day of being victimized than we do. We need to appreciate those allied citizenries whose lives are on the line, just as much as or more than our own American troops' lives are on the line.