none of this would be happening at all.

The main thing wrong with Obama's suggestion is not necessarily that he wants to go after the people who attacked us. It's that the people who attacked us are not a country. They are people who hide and take refuge within so-called "friendly" nations--Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, most notably. This is a fundamental fact that the foreign policy establishment still has not been able to digest almost a full six years after 9/11.

But that's just where the contradictions begin. You see, The Clash of Civilizations (the Samuel Huntington book, most concretely, but the argument as well) rests on the argument that seeing the world in terms of nation-states is wrong. It's got to be seen in terms of civilizations. It's a bogus either/or argument, and it's made more absurd by a ludicrous misrepresentation of Thomas Kuhn's theory of scientific paradigm, but you go to war with the theory you've got, not the theory you'd like to have, and that is the theory we went to war with--a theory that itself is at war with our own foreign policy establishment's continued insistence on thinking in terms of nation-states.

There is, of course, one more major contradiction involved. After the WMD lie turned bust, and Ahmed Chalabi turned out to be the joke every sane person always knew him to be, BushCo decided to to turn two problems into one solution, and declare the Iraq War to be all about bringing Democracy to the Middle East (though, of course, not to Pakistan or Saudi Arabia.)

The problem here is that The Clash of Civilizations was written as counter-argument against Fukiyama's The End of History, which argued for the universal triumph of the Western political/economic model. Which is to say, brining Democracy to the Middle East, and all the rest of the world (though, of cource, not to Pakistan or Saudi Arabia or anyplace else where it would ruffle the wrong feathers).

So, there you have it, a three-way contradiction at the very heart of the very serious foreign policy elite's very serious ideas about what we are doing in the world, and why it cannot be questioned by anyone.

Now, here's the exit punch-line. Although Huntington wrote The Clash of Civilizations to counter-attack Fukiyama's The End of History, Huntington himself had written an earlier book quite similar to Fukiyama's in its Western triumphalist theme. This was The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century.

This bizaare situation was pointed out in an article in the American Prospect in July 1998, "The Clash of Samuel Huntingtons," by Jacob Heilbrunn. (Only available online via High Beam and Questia, so far as I can tell.)

So there you have it. Once you cut through all the verbose posturing, and actually get down to the fundamental Big Ideas, what the foreign policy establishement's very serious dialogue most closely resembles is Abbott and Costello's "Who's on first?" routine.

Or perhaps that's too complicated. Perhaps it's the Marx Brothers and the "Sanity Clause."

In spite of his preening, Cole was forced to admit on al-Jazeera that he doesn't speak Arabic well enough to be interviewed in the language, so I'd be cautious about holding him up as a great example of scholarly achievement.

Daniel Pipes, knows Arabic (and French, and German), holds a Harvard PhD (with a thesis on Islam and politics) has lived in Egypt, and has written 12 books about the Middle East. Somehow, though, I don't think his scholarship will impress this crowd.

The problem with Obama's big stupid mouth (and other big stupid mouths) is that the multipolar powers that be in Pakistan are afraid, and not without reason, that if Osama bin Laden should turn up dead the U.S. is going to withdraw all the support we've offered Pakistan since 9/11.

The Pakistanis are afraid to entirely cut their ties with Islamists and other transnational movements because they fear domination by India, China, a re-Talibanized Afghanistan, Iran, or a combination thereof.

Musharraf or no Musharraf, the Pakistani officers' corps is going to be a substantial power in that country for the foreseeable future. Instead of giving them new reasons to fear a fickle U.S. foreign policy — and a possible invasion — we ought to be finding ways to improve that relationship in order to better accomplish our own goals in the region.

I'm starting to understand why the subject of Pushtun nationalism only gets raised on the Daily Show by Musharraf and not by anyone else in any other venues.

Perhaps the "serious" people are afraid to bring it up. And I suppose it's way too complicated a topic for the American left, which is why Jon Stewart totally dropped the ball when Musharraf tossed it to him on the show.

By the way, I can't believe Obama has the nerve to hold a fund raiser in West Hollywood. He's the only Democratic candidate, to my knowledge, who has yet to promise to stop the DEA from raiding dispensaries.

If he's trying to position himself as the Democratic anti-medpot candidate, then perhaps his handlers should keep him OUT of places like West Hollywood, where a large fraction of the population would be dead without cannabis to keep down their HIV meds.

He should move his fundraiser to San Diego, where the local political leadership WANTS the DEA to come in.

I think he's just trying to prove he's a big man. He's trying to look dominating, that's all.

I don't believe he really understands what's going on in Afghanistan or Pakistan at all. I dount that he's never even cracked a single "serious" book on the subject.

And "Charlie Wilson's War" does NOT COUNT.

He's just trying to sound tough, and we've already had enough of that, I think.

So after careful consideration, my vote is split.

I do believe we're only going to be able to get Bin Laden by relieving Musharraf of any culpability in the process.

But I also support seriousness and scholarship, and I think Obama is putting on a big macho show without any real information to back it up.