The savagery of the slaughter of 132 schoolchildren and nine teaching staff in Peshawar last month stunned even hard-bitten politicians and journalists used to senseless atrocities. The terrorist killers riddled students with bullets and forced schoolchildren to watch as they burned a teacher alive.
Such a horrific deed, leading commentators declared, should prove a turning point, if not a tipping point, finally to force Pakistan's squabbling factions, the nominal political rulers, the army commanders, the insidious army intelligence, the judges who have given the shelter of the law to terrorists, to put their heads together and pull Pakistan back from becoming a failed state.
That is too much wishful thinking: It would need a quantum leap in imagination, creativity and cooperation between nasty antagonistic players who have their own petty empires to defend, and who are egged on throughout by bigger powers who, frankly, don't give a damn about Pakistan or the health and safety of its schoolchildren.