Pakistan Falling to the Taliban?

It seems to me as if all the focus on Iraq and Afghanistan, while obviously warranted, as we have two wars currently taking place there, coupled with the attention given to Israel, Iran and Saudi Arabia is making it so that the situation in Pakistan is somewhat lost in the muddle of Middle East conflict. This is probably not a good thing.

Pakistan has been one of our most important allies in the War on Terror, especially in the Afghan theater, and it's now in danger of becoming either a failed state or a nation run by the Taliban. With all the recent political turmoil, involving assassinations, resignations, maybe even a coup, if I remember correctly, the overall stability of Pakistan is rapidly decreasing. This of course makes it ripe for insurgency action by Taliban members working out of the remote, essentially lawless borderlands of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

So what's the problem here? Well, besides likely signaling a complete failure of the conflict in Afghanistan, a Pakistan run by the Taliban would pose a grave threat to world safety.

Pakistan is one of the few nations in the world with nuclear capabilities, developed to serve as a deterrent against perpetual sharer of enmity India, also a nuclear power. A nuclear Taliban would, obviously, not be good. For anybody, except maybe the Taliban, although that might even be debatable.

Michael Crowley, a blogger at "The Plank" on the website of The New Republic, wonders how long it takes for Obama to send in airstrikes and/or special forces, whether the Pakistani government endorses it or not. A very fair question, although it's entirely possible neither is a feasible solution, at least, not without extreme dissent from an American public already tired of two Middle Eastern wars.

That seems to me to be a very reasonable argument against the war in Iraq, especially, but a lot of war in general: What do you do when you're in an unnecessary war, and all of a sudden a necessary one pops up? That's not to say that Pakistan is destined to fall, and we should all hope very much that it doesn't, but it's something to think about. You can only engage in so many battles at once. Pick your fights wisely, I guess.