"I want you to know that this fight is not Pakistan's alone," she said in remarks carried live on Pakistani news channels. "This is our struggle as well."

Sahib Gul, a doctor at a nearby hospital, said 86 people were killed and more than 200 injured. Many of the victims were women and children.

No group claimed responsibility for the bombing, but that is not unusual, especially when the victims are Pakistani civilians.

Three bombs have exploded in Peshawar this month, including another one that killed more than 50 people, part of a barrage of at least 10 major attacks across the country that have killed some 250 people. Most have targeted security forces, but some bombs have gone off in public places, apparently to sow fear and expose the weakness of the government.

The Taliban have warned Pakistan that they would stage more attacks if the army does not end a new ground offensive in the South Waziristan tribal region, where the military has dispatched some 30,000 troops to flush out insurgents. South Waziristan is a major base for the Pakistani Taliban and other foreign militants.

North West Frontier Province Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain blamed the militants for Wednesday's attack.

"We are hitting them at their center of terrorism, and they are hitting back targeting Peshawar," he said. "This is a tough time for us. We are picking up the bodies of our women and children, but we will follow these terrorists and eliminate them."

When Obama came into office in January, 142,000 U.S. troops were in Iraq, conducting regular patrols of the major cities. His Republican rivals were dead set against U.S. withdrawal on a strict timetable. He faced something close to an insurrection from some of his commanders in the field, such as Gen. Ray Odierno, who opposed a quick departure from Iraq. Moreover, Obama assumed the presidency at a time when Iran and the U.S. were virtually on a war footing and there had been no direct talks between the two countries on most of the major issues dividing them. In February, the government of Pakistan virtually ceded the Swat Valley and the Malakand Division to the Pakistani Taliban of Maulvi Fazlullah, allowing the imposition of the latter's fundamentalist version of Islamic law on residents, and Islamabad had no stomach for taking on the increasingly bold extremists.

Eight months later, it is a different world. While it is still early in his presidency, and there is too much work unfinished to give him an overall grade, it's already apparent he's outperforming his predecessor.

Iraq: B Obama has decisively won the argument over Iraq policy. Despite the massive bombings in Baghdad on Sunday -- the most deadly since 2007 -- the U.S. troop withdrawal is ahead of schedule and seems unlikely to be halted. One reason is that the security situation in Iraq, while shaky, did not deteriorate when U.S. troops ceased their urban patrols on June 30 (a date Iraqis celebrated as "Sovereignty Day"). Occasional big explosions obscure the reality of reduced guerrilla attacks. According to the Pentagon, civilian casualties have been steadily declining since late summer. Even John McCain said that Sunday's carnage should not delay the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq -- a 180-degree turn in policy for the former presidential candidate.

The process of U.S. disentanglement from Iraq has been gradual, generating no big headlines, no "Obama brings 22,000 troops out of Iraq, cuts war spending by $30 billion." But, in fact, troop levels are down to about 120,000 from 142,000 early this year, and spending on the war has fallen, from $180 billion in 2008 to $150 billion this year. Many things could still go wrong in Iraq, affecting the ability of the U.S. to meet the current timetable, but so far the Iraqi security forces are generally keeping order (there were horrific bombings when the U.S. was in control, too). He can be faulted for not working closely enough with the Nouri al-Maliki government to ease the transition, hence a grade of B instead of an A.

Iran: A There has also been movement on Iran. On Oct. 1 the administration fulfilled its campaign pledge by joining other members of the United Nations Security Council and Germany in Geneva to jawbone with Iran on the nuclear issue. As a result, Iran accepted that a United Nations inspection team would visit the newly announced enrichment facility near Qom, and on Monday inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency arrived at the Fardo plant. The acceptance of inspectors is an excellent sign. As long as Tehran remains willing to allow U.N. inspections, both at Natanz near Isfahan and at Fardo (which is not operational but could eventually house 3,000 centrifuges), neither facility can be used to produce fissionable material. Obama has changed the West's dynamics with Iran by direct negotiation, something that 63 percent of the American people support.

Pakistan: B Then there is Pakistan. The Obama administration came into office determined to whittle away the "state's rights" prerogatives of the Pashtuns, who form about 12 percent of the Pakistani population, of which the tiny minority of Taliban had taken advantage. From its inception, the Pakistani federal government had inherited from the British Empire a policy of not attempting to rule the tribal Pashtuns too heavy-handedly. In addition, the Pakistani military uses some Taliban and other guerrilla groups to project influence in the Pashtun areas of neighboring Afghanistan, making the generals reluctant to move against them. In spring-summer, the Obama administration convinced the Pakistani government to launch a major military operation against the Taliban in the Swat Valley. Despite temporarily displacing 2 million residents, the operation enjoyed substantial success and gained wide popular support from a Pakistani population -- including most Pashtuns -- increasingly appalled at the brutality of Taliban rule. In October, the military launched a similar operation against the Taliban in South Waziristan, despite a raft of bombings aimed by the militants at deterring the federal government from coming after them.

Obama has, moreover, signed a $7.5 billion civilian aid package that encourages economic, educational and medical development and puts pressure on the civilian government to keep the military under its control. The Bush administration gave most of its aid in the form of military weaponry or support, something of which polling shows the Pakistani public disapproves. Obama intends to build clinics and schools and to develop an infrastructure that might help fight militancy more effectively than any drone strikes can.

Obama's Pakistan approach, of building state capacity and improving the economy and basic services, while dealing with the Pakistani Taliban through large-scale military operations, may or may not succeed. But compared to his predecessor's policy of just handing over billions to corrupt military officers, some of whom have links to factions of militants, Obama's policies have been far more coherent. His use of unmanned predator drones to kill suspected al-Qaida operatives and the aid bill's demand for the supremacy of civilian rule over the military are both unpopular in some quarters, because of fears that the U.S. is turning the country into a sort of colony and infringing against its sovereignty. Obama may need to be less heavy-handed in the future to avoid a popular backlash. If not for this insensitivity to Pakistani popular opinion, he might deserve an A. The Swat and South Waziristan campaigns, at least, appear to have the support of the Pakistani public.

The administration has not succeeded everywhere. The president has yet to make a determination on his Afghanistan policy, and so far little progress has been made on a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A verdict is still outstanding about his performance in those two regions, leading to two grades of "incomplete." But Obama's withdrawal from Iraq is actually ahead of schedule, his direct engagement with Iran is producing some tentative results, and he has strong-armed the Pakistani state into owning the problem of the Pakistani Taliban, while instituting a major civilian aid program. Far from accomplishing nothing in his first eight months, Obama has been a whirlwind of activity and has already gained a place in the Iraqi, Iranian and Pakistani history books. He receives his lowest grade for his failure to force America's chattering classes to take notice. While it is a bit of a relief not to be subjected to the constant propaganda of the Bush administration about its creation of shining cities on a hill abroad, the Obama administration has gone too far in the opposite direction, hiding its light beneath a bushel.

So, in an unsurprising move, MoveOn.org today will send out an email calling for the president to withdraw from Afghanistan, echoing an increasingly prevalent position on the American left. Meanwhile, precisely on cue, Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., yesterday made his case for maintaining an American presence in the country. Said the senator:

It's more like, and I hate to use the analogy, it is like the Second World War. Shortly after it was over, if the Nazis began to form again and tried to take back Germany from a new democratic government, what would we have done? We would not have stood by and let it happen!

I’m sure it’s just killing Lieberman, this duty to say these things. Just like it did on May 15, 2008, when he said that President Bush’s use of the word of “appeasement” to describe Democrats was “exactly right." Or three days later, when Lieberman took to the Wall Street Journal to accuse his fellow Democrats of betraying their party's noble Hitler-fighting lineage.

Beginning in the 1940s, the Democratic Party was forced to confront two of the most dangerous enemies our nation has ever faced: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. In response, Democrats under Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy forged and conducted a foreign policy that was principled, internationalist, strong and successful.

Meanwhile, the real al-Qaida is threatening a war of attritition against U.S. troops in the Middle East. The message was far more oriented toward the Israeli-Palestinian issue than toward Afghanistan, which seems to be positioned as the place where U.S. troops are punished for alleged American misdeeds elsewhere. Whenever al-Qaida foregrounds the Israeli-Palestinian issue, it is a sign of the organization's weakness. Everyone knows that they haven't done anything practical for the Palestinians, and that the Palestinian leadership doesn't want them grandstanding on the backs of the Palestinians. Bin Laden is increasingly irrelevant. In the new audiotape (note: not videotape) attributed to him, he accuses Obama of failing to honor his pledge to end the wars. But in fact Obama only pledged to get out of Iraq, and there is every reason to believe that he will do so. Al-Qaida knows that that step will virtually drain its support and recruiting ability (only 4 percent of Arabs say they care deeply about Afghanistan).

In an ominous development for Afghanistan, presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah has accused incumbent President Hamid Karzai of using state resources to engineer the stealing of the Aug. 20 presidential election, accusing Karzai of treason. Abdullah said that Karzai bribed tribal elders between $4,000 and $8,000 each to throw the election to Karzai. Abdullah is likely stealing a page from Mir Husain Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, the losers in the Iranian presidential elections, who refused to accept the officially announced results and who alleged that the election was fixed in favor of incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Whereas the result of this dispute in Iran was that hundreds of thousands of mostly peaceful demonstrators repeatedly gathered in the streets until brutally repressed, in Afghanistan protests are likely to be rather more violent.

I think it just got substantially less likely that the West will be able to get Karzai and Abdullah to form some sort of national unity government together.

Abdullah wants there to be a runoff election, which likely will not be necessary by current rules, which require it only if no candidate receives at least 50 precent of the vote. But Abdullah believes that the votes that put Karzai up to 54 percent were at least in part fraudulent and the result of vote-buying with state monies. A runoff is also becoming difficult to hold unless it is scheduled very soon, because winter snows will limit the mobility of much of the population until the spring. But the Independent Electoral Commission is warning that a complete count of the first round may still be weeks away. For Afghanistan to be without a president all winter and spring could be disastrous, not only for the country but also for the Obama administration's military strategy.

CBS has video on the ongoing electoral crisis:

Even generally pro-Western Pakistani newspaper editors are accusing Western politicians who are defending the legitimacy of the election process in Afghanistan of living in another universe.

Meanwhile, Deirdre Tynan at Eurasia.net argues that the increasing dependence of the U.S. and NATO on supply routes coming down from Central Asia into northern Afghanistan has helped destabilize the north, especially Kunduz province, which earlier had been relatively calm. The hijacking of fuel trucks and the subsequent German-ordered U.S. airstrike on the trucks in Kunduz all stemmed from the turn of the U.S. to the northern supply routes. I am alarmed by her suggestion that for the U.S. to depend ever more heavily on Central Asian routes for supplies could impel the anti-government militants to begin hitting Tajikistan, Uzbekistan,  etc. That is, the Afghanistan war effort could eventually create a new silk road, in the form of a highway of death that destabilizes the whole region.

The Obama administration is considering increasing U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan beyond the additional 21,000 troops Obama has already ordered to Afghanistan. The New York Times reported Friday on cold feet among some Democrats, including Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. Carl Levin, R-Mich.

Salon asked Rice during the breakfast why the deny-the-safe-haven argument still works in 2009, since al-Qaida has essentially left Afghanistan and there are many other countries where al-Qaida could operate. Rice responded, “The crucial difference is that Afghanistan and Pakistan … have been and remain a place” where the terror group has sought refuge. She noted the porous border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, where al-Qaida has holed up since the initial U.S. invasion in late 2001.