[Erin] A Pre-preemptive strike?

In one of my posts yesterday, I used Pope Benedict XVI's phrase, "the dictatorship of relativism."

Today's news out of Pakistan gives us a look at the other kind of dictatorship--the one that involves the kind of leader who handles challenges to his election by suspending the Constitution, firing several Supreme Court judges and replacing them with a new court of eleven, which then obligingly overturns all of the serious challenges to his election (leaving one minor one to be dealt with; it's widely expected to be dismissed).

As troubling as the news out of Pakistan may be, I found this New York Times op-ed even more troubling. Is it really the time, now, to begin a national conversation about the feasibility and options for a military solution to the problem of Pakistan in the event of a complete destabilization of the country? Unpleasant as it is to have to deal with Musharraf (even given the expressed hope that the United States can reopen a conversation between Pakistan's current leader and Benazir Bhutto on the topic of power sharing) it's hard to overlook the appearance that he has the current situation well in hand; there's little evidence to suggest that events will quickly, or ever, escalate to the point where the sort of power vacuum envisioned by the authors of the op-ed will occur; but the piece itself suggests that we may not want to wait that long:

The task of stabilizing a collapsed Pakistan is beyond the means of the United States and its allies. Rule-of-thumb estimates suggest that a force of more than a million troops would be required for a country of this size. Thus, if we have any hope of success, we would have to act before a complete government collapse, and we would need the cooperation of moderate Pakistani forces.

When we went into Iraq, we did so having been assured repeatedly that Iraq with its weapons of mass destruction posed an immediate threat to the safety of the American public. Now, it seems, we are no longer supposed to act only when a country becomes an immediate threat, but "before a complete governmental collapse" in order to ensure the stability of a country like Pakistan whose nuclear capabilities might otherwise fall into the wrong hands.

Such an action would not merely be a preemptive strike; it would be a pre-preemptive strike, a series of military actions taken to guarantee that a country doesn't trend toward becoming a threat. Although I certainly want America and Americans protected from terrorists, I also want America to remain America, and I can't even imagine any of the founding fathers accepting acquiescently the notion that the government of the United States has the power to fight an embryonic "pre-war" in an effort to maintain the status quo of our relationship with another sovereign nation. To be blunt, I can hardly imagine a less American idea.