French President Charles De Gaulle once cautioned the overly ambitious with the admonition that cemeteries are filled with the indispensible and irreplaceable. Regarding Pakistan, the good general was wrong. Punjab’s late Governor, Salmaan Taseer, gunned down last week by a member of the provincial government’s elite police security unit, was as close to being indispensible to assuring Pakistan’s evolution to a democratic and secular state as anyone in that nation. Salmaan was, and his family remains, close friends. He was labelled Pakistan’s leading liberal voice; that description is akin to calling Beethoven and Mozart merely ‘musicians’. Taseer was an intellect of huge proportion. A realist, pragmatist and humanist, he would have found appropriate company in the US’s leading intellectual founding fathers — Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton. Two of his virtues I particularly admired were his irreverent sense of humour and courage. In a discussion over the rise of the US’s Tea Party Movement, Taseer quipped that its origins must have been from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and the Mad Hatter. Regarding courage, I have seen little equal in politics or in my own experiences in war. Dressed in his customary black sunglasses and attire, he had the charisma of a Hollywood star. His self-admitted murderer, Mumtaz Qadri, acted on his radically distorted views of the Quran, which the governor rejected publicly and often, calling Pakistan’s blasphemy laws “black” and urging clemency for Aasia Bibi, a Christian Pakistani woman sentenced to death for reportedly violating that law. Hundreds of black-bearded clergy and Pakistani lawyers called Qadri a hero and promised an acquittal at the trial hearing. Even in a conspiracy-obsessed nation such as Pakistan, the political overtones of this assassination mandate a high-level and immediate investigation as the security detail was approved and selected by the elected provincial government and not by the presidentially appointed governor, both of whom were from opposing political parties. In our mourning over this immense loss, three overriding issues cannot be ignored. First, in the US and the rest of the west, this killing magnifies the paranoia over radical Islam, al Qaeda and global terror. In truth, virtually all religions have an evil, or to use Taseer’s phrase, “black side”, to them. It was an ultra orthodox Jew who assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin 15 years ago, virtually ending any chance of peace in the region. And today, ultra-right American Christians have bombed abortion clinics and killed physicians for murdering the unborn and unprotected. Stamping out these extreme and unacceptable aspects of religion is the issue, not blaming and holding accountable only one for all evil. Secondly, as Taseer frequently reminded us, Pakistan has some 70-80 million youth that are 18 years and under with few prospects for jobs, education or the future. Bringing to them necessary tools in terms of education, employment and a vision for a hopeful future was one of his highest priorities. He could hear this time bomb ticking. It still is. Finally, the US must get serious about Pakistan, about what must and can be done and then they must do it. The editorial pages of the New York Times and The Washington Post withstanding, and despite the hue and cry of complaints from Congress about Pakistan’s corruption and apathy to fighting the war on terror, do the US and the west wish to succeed or not in bringing stability to the region? If the answer is yes, then real action must be taken. Critics argue that since 9/11, billions have already been sent to Pakistan. More will not help. But money is not the major issue although, if emergency loans from the IMF do not continue, the nation will go bankrupt and collapse financially. Crucial are, as Taseer argued, political, strategic, economic and psychological support. First is a textile tariff relief that will not cost US workers a single job. Second is agreeing to discussions on a nuclear treaty similar to the one signed with India. Third is using the US and other major powers to encourage negotiations between India and Pakistan to reduce tensions and flash points whether over Kashmir or Mumbai-style threats. Last, and the administration may be moving in this direction, the US must decide how critical Pakistani military action in North Waziristan is for success in Afghanistan. If vital, then Pakistan needs the tools in terms of military equipment to do the job. After spending many hundreds of billions of dollars in oil rich Iraq and Afghanistan in equipping their security forces, several tens of billions of dollars for Pakistan seems a bargain despite our own financial hardships. Make no mistake: without these actions, the current Pakistani government will fall. The opposition, headed by Nawaz Sharif, is no friend of the US or our Afghan policy. If that happens, in 2012, many will ask, “Who lost Pakistan?” The answer will be the Pakistanis. But we will have allowed it to happen. The writer is Chairman of the Killowen Group that advises leaders of government and business, and Senior Advisor at Washington DC’s Atlantic Council