by Patrick J. Buchanan

“Things are in the saddle, and ride mankind.”

Emerson’s couplet comes to mind as the New Year opens with Pakistan, the second largest Muslim country on Earth, in social and political chaos, trending toward a failed state with nuclear weapons.

Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, whom the White House pressed to return home from exile to form an anti-Islamist alliance with President Pervez Musharraf, is dead, assassinated on the second try in two months.