NORMALLY, the foreign ministers of other countries do not comment on the law and order situation of other countries, not even the US Secretary of State. However, Pakistan has laid itself open to such comments because the law and order situation is so poor. The result has not just been the attack on the touring Sri Lankans. But also US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has seen fit to pronounce on the law and order situation, declaring at a meeting of NATO foreign ministers that Pakistan was facing serious internal threats. One of her subordinates posted in Kabul said that Islamabad was a bigger worry than Kabul, because Pakistan had a large population, and was nuclear-armed. There has got to be some stretching of diplomatic license to justify someone in an embassy not accredited to pronounce on internal affairs, which reflects the failure of the home country's diplomacy. However, the Pakistan government has allowed this in the past, and anyway, the diplomat was merely expanding on something his boss already said. The Kabul diplomat went as far as to say that Pakistan "has certainly made radical Islam a part of its political life, and it now seems a deeply ingrained element of its political culture." While Secretary Clinton did not buttress this statement with any words of wisdom of her own, neither did she deny it. Thus it can be assumed to be official US policy. What Secretary Clinton did say, was equally significant: that the attack in Lahore was an 'eerie replica' of the Mumbai attacks, which India blames on Pakistan, even though it still refuses a joint investigation to uncover the truth. This should not allow the government to escape the blame for its omissions, which saw it more preoccupied with the wheeling-dealing involved in forming the Punjab government, than with the security for the Test match. It is probably hoping for too much, but there has been no Pakistani protest over the cavalier way its internal affairs have been bandied about by American diplomats.