Pakistan, Oct. 10 -- There is a hollow weight that settles in your chest when you watch the news and see names you will remember long after the screen goes dark. Lieutenant Colonel Junaid Arif. Major Tayyab Rahat. Azam Gul. Adil Hussain. Gul Ameer. Sher Khan. Talish Faraz. Irshad Hussain. Tufail Khan. Aqib Ali. Muhammad Zahid. Eleven men who left homes, children, mothers and small towns to wear the uniform and stand between our people and those who would do us harm. Their deaths in Orakzai are not a line on a casualty list; they are the tearing open of a wound our nation has been forced to tend for decades.

For over forty years, Pakistan has shown an uncommon mercy to people fleeing violence from across the western border. We fed them, s...