PAKISTAN'S NUCLEAR LEAKS AND OPEN BORDERS
Forget the Axis of Evil. A news story that has broken in the past few days shines the spotlight on a much more dangerous scene. AQ Khan, father of Pakistan's bomb, leaked nuclear secrets to India, Libya and North Korea, so he's under arrest, but to the Pakistani people he's a hero. I find Pakistan a fascinating country. It was high on my list for internships in 2002. Pakistan is much poorer than the Arab countries because it lacks oil wealth, but it is in real ways more advanced-- culturally, politically. It is a fragile state, "in the shadow of jihad and Afghanistan," as the title of a recent book put it. It lies at the intersection of so many worlds. Musharraf, despite taking power in a coup, represents the British side of Pakistan's heritage. But Arab oil money, and Pakistani expats working in Arabia, have given Pakistan an element of the Middle East. Salman Rushdie, in Midnight's Children described Pakistan as a "fairy-tale country" where everything was lies. Somehow that description haunted me...

What makes the world interested in this fascinating cultural blend is that they have nukes. And a cauldron of Islamism froths beneath the pro-Western president, and they are much more likely to take over because this is not the Arab world and democracy, though it has usually proved abortive in Pakistan, is a force to be reckoned with. We can't carry out a regime change in Pakistan the way we did in Iraq. We would certainly not be welcomed as liberators there, nor could we preside over a democratic transition better than Musharraf has done. Musharraf has arrested our man for now, but the people see him as a national "hero" and would like to set him free. To do what? Spread still more nuclear secrets? But how much more pressure can Musharraf take? There have been two assassination attempts recently. If Musharraf were killed, the country could explode in violence and end up under Islamist control. Good luck preventing nuclear proliferation then!

The most interesting think about the threat of proliferation of Pakistan's nukes is how the threats we face can change so fast. Journalist Mary Anne Weaver travelled in Balochistan, one of the most Islamist regions of Pakistan, and spoke to students who said they disliked America, but would forgive it if they just had a chance to study there. Now here's the irony: with respect to the threat of terrorism, closing off the borders does seem to make us safer. Yet those closed borders are the clearest sign that the American-born are a hereditary elite in this world, and generate ill will against us everywhere. They alienate the students in Pakistan, for example. And now the Pakistani public is demonstrating for the release of a man far more dangerous to us than bin Laden or Saddam or Mullah Omar, and there's nothing we can do. Imagine how different the situation would be if we had opened our borders to Pakistan, if millions of Pakistanis had gone here and home over the years, if the remittances were flowing from Detroit or Los Angeles instead of from Riyadh.

The deeper moral here is that you do well by doing good. By denying the right to migrate, we weaken ourselves and create monsters that wish to destroy us. The crowds cheering for AQ Khan offer a glimpse of how we may one day suffer for our sins.

CONGRESS RESISTS BUSH'S BIG SPENDING
Can the Republicans send a signal to the soon-to-vote electorate that they really do intend to do something about the runaway deficit. Remember, Republican dominance in Congress began with the Contract with America in 1994, and the Republican Congress achieved the balanced budget before Bush's compassionate conservatism, the war on terror, and a recession tripped them up. Now it looks like Congress is taking the reins back. If they show this kind of discipline during the boom that is beginning, we really might get back to balanced budgets in the next few years. Personally, though, I wouldn't mind seeing a few tax hikes to speed up the process.

BULLISH ON BUSH
Despite the sagging poll numbers, I still have a hunch that Bush will win in November. It's as if the American people have answered "yes, approve" so long to job approval questions about Bush that they've gotten bored, so they've decided to try answering no for a little while. I don't think the American people are stupid enough to think that WMDs matter-- that issue has been obsolete since April 9th, when it was clear the Iraq war really was a liberation. The economy is improving. The Democrats are an improbable place to turn on the deficit. Kerry is a hypocrite, an arrogant blue-blood, a bore, and far too liberal. My intuition tells me that the sag in the polls has to do with mood rather than substance.

EDWARDS' TOUGH CHOICE
The New York Times is still dreaming how Edwards (and even Dean) have a chance. That seems silly to me. The big question now is: will Edwards accept the #2 position on the ticket? Will he subordinate his eloquence, his charisma and charm to Kerry's stale sloganeering? He claims that he won't, but if he got the offer and refused, it would be a betrayal of his party. He's not trying to hold his Senate seat, so he has nowhere else to go. A veep run will bring him name recognition, keep him in the public eye. If Kerry crashes and burns, though, will Edwards suffer for it, too?