Pakistan is both an ally in the war on terror, and in some sense, a battleground of the war on terror.

Some historians trace the start of the War on Terror to November 4, 1979, the day the hostages were taken in Tehran.

Pakistan was once called the most allied ally of the United States. We are now the most nonallied.

“Terrorism is the war of the poor. War is the terrorism of the rich.”

Other places are also generators of far-flung violence beyond their own borders - Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are obvious examples - but none has as long a history of war, resistance, and terror as Chechnya.

Have we raised the threshold of horror so high that nothing short of a nuclear strike qualifies as a 'real' war? Are we to spend the rest of our lives in this state of high alert with guns pointed at each other's heads and fingers trembling on the trigger?