Srinagar, March 2 -- There is a particular moral vertigo that arises when the guardians of liberty become arbiters of life and death beyond their own borders. The modern West speaks in a language refined over centuries -democracy as covenant, free speech as sacred inheritance, human rights as universal grammar. Its universities interrogate tyranny. Its courts enshrine due process. Its intellectual traditions insist that power must justify itself before law and conscience alike. In discourse, the language is luminous. Yet when the killing of a sovereign leader such as Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini is contemplated, justified, or celebrated within geopolitical frameworks, a tremor runs through that luminous vocabulary.

Even the suggestion of ...