Trying Out One's New Sword

Nicholas Kristof says Pakistan will probably be President-elect Obama's most pressing and difficult foreign policy problem. If a country with about 60 nuclear weapons teetering on the brink of "collapse" isn't unsettling enough, here's his report on one man serving in President Zardari's government:

One new cabinet member, Israr Ullah Zehri, defended the torture-murder of five women and girls who were buried alive (three girls wanted to choose their own husbands, and two women tried to protect them). "These are centuries-old traditions, and I will continue to defend them," Mr. Zehri said of the practice of burying independent-minded girls alive.

Moral relativism is a bourgeois fantasy.