Musharaff has declared a state of emergency, suspends Constitutution

Pakistan is obviously in trouble. Pakistan’s military ruler General Pervez Musharraf has declared emergency rule, suspended the constitution and closed down the country’s private television stations.

Although there has been a lot of conflict with the Taliban and fundamentalist militants, the declaration of martial law from Musharraf had to happen at this time because the Pakistani Supreme Court was going to declare this week that Musharraf was not eligible to run for reelection a few weeks ago (when he was reelected) because he remains a General on active duty. Since Musharraf originally took power in a coup in 1969, this declaration of martial law when the Supreme Court threatened to rule him ineligible for reelection as President is entirely in character.

This isn't about the threat to Pakistan from Islamic fundamentalists. This is about Musharraf keeping his job as President.

The Times of India points out that Bush has warned Musharraf not to declare martial law. Musharraf has defied Bush. No telling what Bush will do.

Why Islamic attacks in Europe and not the U.S?

A new McClatchy news report points out that there have been numerous terrorists attacks in Great Britain, and very few in the United States. You have to ask why. Turns out that the answer isn't that hard to find.

Karl-Heinz Kamp, the security policy coordinator at Germany's prestigious Konrad Adenauer research center, said it was easy to understand why.

"The U.S. has a historical advantage; America is still the land of opportunity to the whole world. The people moving there believe the American dream of social mobility," he said. "In Europe, we've historically treated our immigrants as hired help, and waited for them to finish the work they arrived for and go home."

Bob Ayers, a security and terrorism expert with London's Chatham House, a foreign-policy research center, thinks that immigrants to the U.S. actually become Americans, giving the United States a huge advantage in avoiding homegrown al Qaida terrorists. Europeans encourage immigrants to retain their native cultures, causing them to be ostracized more readily.

"The Islamic population in the United States is better assimilated into the general population, whereas here, in Germany, in France, they're very much on the outside looking in," he said. "When people get disaffected, sadly, there's not much loyalty to country in that sort of situation."

In short, the policy built into the U.S. Constitution that any child born in the U.S. is a full U.S. citizen prevents pockets of disaffection from developing in the U.S.

Anyone familiar with the German policy of allowing Turkish Guest Workers into Germany to work, then expecting them to leave and take their families with them doesn't work. That was obvious in the 1960's and has not changed.

That's not the only reason for so few attacks in the U.S. but it is a lot of it, and it sure makes the "guest worker" ideas in the proposed "Immigration Reform" legislation real non-starters.