War has erupted in Pakistan, with Islamic extremists getting bolder and the government striking back.

With all the hoopla surrounding the upcoming election, some important stories get pushed to the background. One of them is the new assertiveness of the Taliban in the nuclear state of Pakistan. The nation's military is now in a state of full-fledged war with the militants, and local tribal militias are joining the fray as well.

Writes the International Herald Tribune:

PESHAWAR, Pakistan: War has come to Pakistan, not just as terrorist bombings, but as full-scale battles, leaving Pakistanis angry and dismayed as the dead, wounded and displaced turn up right on their doorstep.

An estimated 250,000 people have now fled the helicopters, jets, artillery and mortar fire of the Pakistani Army, and the assaults, intimidation and rough justice of the Taliban who have dug into Pakistan's tribal areas.

About 20,000 people are so desperate they have flooded over the border from the Bajaur tribal area to seek safety in Afghanistan.

Upon reading this, I couldn't help but think of the perhaps-prophetic words of Pakistan's former president, Pervez Musharraf. Not all that long before he resigned on August 8 of this year under impeachment pressure, he responded to calls by the United States and other entities to yield to democracy by saying (I'm paraphrasing), "What good is so-called democracy if Pakistan becomes a failed state?"

Yes, especially when that failed state has nuclear weapons.

Musharraf essentially was saying that if you oust him in the name of "democracy," his country's future might be imperiled. Sure, it could easily be cast as a self-serving message, and maybe it was, but is it a coincidence that a mere two months after his resignation the Islamists started rearing their heads with new ferocity?

Perhaps it was. I won’t definitely say otherwise, as I've always striven to abide by that Confucian' maxim, "Wisdom is . . . when you do not know something, knowing that you do not know it."

Maybe this war would be raging even if Musharraf still held the reins – maybe it would even be more intense. I'll also allow that my judgment of the man could very well be erroneous. And I certainly know he wasn’t exactly as popular as karahi among his people; many called him “Busharraf,” alluding to his supposed coziness with the Bush administration.

So what is my point?

There is one thing I do know, a truth to which most in our government seem oblivious:

Democracy is not a god. It is not even a religion. It certainly is no panacea. And we ignore this fact at our own peril.

I once treated this in a piece titled "The Folly of Deifying Democracy," writing:

[There is] a political correctness that would prescribe Western-world solutions to Third World problems.

Our problem in Iraq has not been winning the war, but winning the peace. Toppling Saddam Hussein was easy enough, but toppling the medieval attitudes of a fractious and often ferocious people is a different matter. And what do we prescribe as a remedy for this malaise? A dalliance with democracy.

President Bush has said that democracies don’t go to war with one another. This much reminds me of the quaint naiveté of a century ago that dubbed WWI “The War to End All Wars.”

Now we have the political system to end all wars.

It’s not that our desire to democratize Afghanistan and Iraq grew from pure fantasy. After WWII, we installed democracies in the Axis powers and watched Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Italy, develop vibrant economies and stable governments. Moreover, it’s also true that democratic forms of government provide checks and balances that temper the caprice of a ruler; a president’s desire to launch an imprudent military campaign will often be countered by cooler heads in bodies that share power. Thus, one could certainly conclude that democracies don’t go to war with one another. Yet, it occurs to me that a truer statement may be that democracies have not yet gone to war with one another; then, an even truer statement may be that democracies don’t always remain democracies: They descend into tyranny.

Then they may go to war with one another.G.K. Chesterton once observed, "You can never have a revolution in order to establish a Democracy. You must have a Democracy in order to have a revolution." This may not be literally true, but the point is well taken.

What were the chances of a successful uprising under the odious and malevolent Saddam Hussein in Iraq? President Bush the elder certainly encouraged one in 1991, which, absent American support (by the way, not providing it after stoking the fires of rebellion was shameful – shades of the Bay of Pigs), only resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of people and the displacement of two million. Hussein didn't even give his people breathing room, let along fighting room.

No good person likes seeing others live in tyranny, but, alas, it is the default state of mankind. That is not to say we should check liberty's ambitions at the door, but we shouldn't check our brain there, either.

Living in bondage is the result of man's fallen nature, and mitigating it is no easy task. And while democracy may be the closest thing to a deity the secular West has, there is no political system to end all wars.

It may not be fun swallowing this bitter pill, but it's far safer than the naive belief that we have a magic one.

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