A co-worker recently asked my opinion on the bloody outcome to the Red Mosque siege in Pakistan.

I noted I hadn’t commented on it because it lacked the kind of qualities that would drive American debate asunder on the issue. Democrats and Republicans alike would be resolved that the storming of a mosque that abducted citizens for “re-education” would be a good thing. But after a minute’s discussion, I realized it would be worthwhile to post something about how the West would do well to recognize it as not too good a thing.

Many might see the storming of the mosque as a sign that Pakistan’s President Musharraf is making a new effort to eradicate extremism in his country. It is not. It is a case of Musharraf and his handlers in the Pakistani intelligence network - the ISI, which has essentially brokered power in the country for the last three decades - protecting themselves. The Red Mosque was not a problem because it was an extreme religious voice, or a nexus of terrorist support, or a de facto theocracy in a major urban center.

It became a problem when it bit the hand that fed it. The ISI and the Red Mosque had collaborated on a number of matters and, as a result, the Mosque received a blind eye when it came to many of its misdeeds. But when some of its over-exuberant students burned down a government ministry and then sparked violence with the government pickets set up around the Mosque in response, things turned extreme. At that point, the Pakistani government surely wrote off the Mosque as more harm than good, and took a bold move in eradicating its influence in Islamabad.

This does not change the matters that Americans most care about: It does not jeopardize the resurgent, centralized leadership of al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan’s frontier provinces - a process the ISI at least abetted, if not entirely facilitated. It does not mean Pakistan’s power is shifting towards the Democratic. It is, in essence, little more than good vintage for bloody watercooler talk.