Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was greeted in Islamabad at the start of her 3-day mission on Wednesday by a massive car bomb which killed at least 90 people in a crowded market. "These attacks on innocent people are cowardly; they are not courageous; they are cowardly," Clinton, showing visible anger, told reporters, emphasizing that last word. Later in the day, Clinton initiated U.S. assistance program for Pakistan's energy sector -- strikingly contrasted against the nihilism of the bomb attack -- aimed at reducing electricity shortages. It is a perfect articulation of "smart power"; as one side seeks to annihilate, the other seeks to build Pakistan's economy. The Secretary has signalled that her foreign policy focus will be on women and children, the unsung victims of wars (and the majority of the planet's population). The first phase of Clinton's program, the centerpiece of the Secretary's first day in Pakistan, involves $125 million of American funding to Pakistan's beleaguered power sector.

Let's face it: Things thus far are not going well in Pakistan. The U.S.-encouraged offensive by the Pakistan military in South Waziristan has set off retaliatory bomb strikes -- like the one greeting the Secretary's arrival -- testing the resolve of non-combatants bearing the brunt of the casualties. For years the South Asian nation has greedily devoured American aid and funneled it towards, among other things, military action. The previous administration was almost entirely ensorcelled by a quixotic war in Mesopotamia.

The current administration, by contrast, has placed "AfPak" -- the so-called graveyard of Empires -- at the center of its foreign policy objectives. As President Obama deliberates over the shape of his Afghanistan policy, still weeks away, Hillary Clinton's moral anger, if only for a moment, seemed particularly well-placed. Whether or not one agrees with the war as one of necessity, we can all share some collective outrage over the killing of innocents in a marketplace. Though the United States is not "dithering" -- Dick Cheney's clumsy characterization -- we do appear to be at what can only be properly considered a standstill. That flash of moral anger by Hillary Clinton, not seen since those hot Tuesdays last summer in the thick of the Democrat primaries, reminds us that standstill or not, the United States is still capable of moral anger at the murder of innocents.

[Image: Wikimedia]