The Enemy of my Enemy.

"There's a broader lesson here, and it speaks to the Bush administration's present jam throughout the Middle East and in other danger zones. If the British had adopted the same policy toward dealing with Pakistan that Bush has adopted toward dealing with, say, Syria or Iran (namely, it's an evil regime, and we don't speak with evil regimes), then a lot of passenger planes would have shattered and spilled into the ocean, hundreds or thousands of people would have died, and the world would have suddenly been plunged into very scary territory." In light of yesterday's foiled plot, Slate's Fred Kaplan points out one of the critical flaws of Dubya Diplomacy (which, thankfully, the British do not share.)