The recent killing of Bin Laden who was hiding in Abottabad in close proximity to Pakistan’s West Point has raised serious doubts about Pakistan and its duplicitous dealing with America. The standard defense offered by its apologists is that the US is naive to expect Pakistan to ignore its own interests and toe the US line merely for the money, it badly needs for its economy and which sustains its corrupt leaders and the military. The US has no other route to supply its troops in Afghanistan and uses the port of Karachi and overland routes and passes as the primary logistical path.
 
The Arab uprisings and Netanyahu with no desire for peace and his adamant refusal of ceding occupied Palestinian territory makes Obama look like an impotent and incompetent blathering non-entity, instead of the leader of the free world. He is unable to do what is best for America because he is too dependent on the finances, votes and media approval of the Israeli lobby and Jewish voters. His republican opponents who want to win and have no interest in the US or its citizens except those who are rich and donate to their campaigns, have already exploited Obama’s dilemma by Romney’s accusation of having thrown Israel under the bus.

Israel has genuine reason to worry for a potentially hostile new Egyptian government and the approval of a Palestinian State by the UN General Assembly, which would put an end to Israel’s shooting of unarmed protestors and blockade of supply routes to the new Palestinian State which would become a new nation with UN membership. So the only card Obama can play to increase his popularity and win re-election, is to withdraw most troops from Afghanistan and Iraq, thus reduce American casualties and expenditures. It would reduce the budget deficit without gutting Medicare and Social Security, which Ryan and his pack of republican hyenas are howling to tear into shreds. This compels him to declare victory and pull out of wars, but he needs to have a Status Of Forces Agreement to retain bases and carry out drone bombing, while permitting the victory of a Taliban coalition government over time. Thus the US exit would be like its previous face saving failures in Korea and Vietnam and like the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan.

This leaves Manmohan Singh’s Cargo Cult foreign policy dependent on American manna falling from heaven to meet his needs and keep Pakistan on a leash in tatters. He has in his usual foolish manner behaved as Sonia’s puppet and wasted two billion dollars of India’s precious reserves on harebrained aid schemes in Afghanistan on a corrupt Karzai government, which is hated by the Pashtuns and he has broken with Iran, let the warm relations with the Northern Alliance vanish. He even lost Karzai’s goodwill and warmth for India, where he went to college, by showing him disfavor when the US did so first, and aligning his foreign policy to suit the US.
 
Karzai the smart and crooked survivor that he is, has gone with Pakistan and made peace overtures to the Taliban, as he like Pakistan knew that the US would pull out sooner or later and tire of the casualties and expenditure. So now we have the US itching to get out, Karzai not wanting to be castrated and hanged like Najibullah after Soviet withdrawal and Pakistan hoping for strategic depth and a friendly Taliban ruled Afghanistan, rather than a Pakhtunistan seceding from Pakistan, all making the best of a bad job.
 
Only stupid India will have to make do with a hostile Taliban ruled Afghanistan (like when it gave asylum to hijackers of the Indian airlines plane and facilitated the collection of ransom), a miffed Karzai, miffed Northern Alliance and a miffed Iran, all for the privilege of wasting two billion dollars which could have been used domestically or for our own Maoists’ pacification, and two terrorist attacks on the Indian embassy and diplomatic residences.
 
Maybe Manmohan Singh should get the Nobel Peace Prize like his dunce preceptor or at least a MacArthur genius award. India has to rely on Israel as an ally because we have common interests and common enemy threats. No Islamic country which puts Islam as a religion and Sharia as its legal base with the usual punishment of apostasy by death can be a reliable ally of a secular India. We can be friendly with Islamic countries and trade with them but we cannot be their military allies or depend on them as long as we have Pakistan as an enemy sheltering itself constantly under the banner of Islam and appealing to other such states as a part of the Ummah under the banner of the Prophet, Hadith or Sunnah.

More importantly, Anatole Lieven, a professor at Cambridge has a new book titled “Pakistan - A Hard Country” in which he says that a large number of Pakistanis actually believe that India is supporting the Taliban and responsible for terror bombing Sufi shrines, Shia mosques and Pakistani Army buildings and personnel. He says that the police don’t function in the country and kidnaping and murders are common. The politicians are corrupt and Islamist and Taliban sympathies are widespread. There are two videos available at the cspan.org website. (Click on video library and listen to two videos both on the Future Of Pakistan dated January 31st, 2011 - speakers Huma Yusuf and Joshua White and the second one of the same title with speakers Hassan Abbas and Najam Sethi dated May 20th, 2011. Both are sponsored by the US Institute For Peace).
 
These speakers are prominent Pakistanis and not Indians or Americans. The points they make are that Pakistan’s population will be over 350 million by 2050 and there will be tremendous shortage of water and maybe even food for its population. (Similar predictions are also for Egypt but within just a few years by others in different analysis) In the meantime radical Islam and terrorism will get worse. Pakistan is rapidly increasing its nuclear arsenal and China has just given it two warships and fifty new fighter planes for free on top of free arms which America gave it.

The speakers suggest that Pakistan should give up its animosity towards India. India should make concessions on Kashmir and trade. The American genius loser Kerry in other programs says, the US must support Pakistan all the way. Now if India had followed Israel’s policy or that of Duryodhana’s towards the Pandavas in the Palace of Lac, it would have bombed Kohuta (like Israel bombed Iraq’s Osirak and Syria’s facility of North Korean origin recently).
 
Only someone as foolish as Manmohan Singh would allow open borders in Kashmir or open visas for trade, so that India can have a repeat of Mumbai 26-11. I know our humanitarian film stars, playback singers, Arundhati Roys and such believers in Hum sub bhai bhai Nehruvians want it, so there films, music and books can get royalties from Pakistan, but us common folks don’t want to be shot at in our train stations and mourn the death of our commandos, so that some crooked ministers can make their children film stars or get a free undeserved apartment in a building for the martyrs. 

It is very clear that the US is fearful of nuclear terrorism and desirous of controlling Central Asian energy reserves and needs Pakistan for that. It is also clear that China wants to set up Pakistan as a counter-force to stunt India’s growth and create instability in South Asia.
 
While India maybe constrained by morality or plain impotence and inability to forego pre-emptive strikes on Pakistan in the past or the present, it would be downright stupid of it to facilitate or prolong Pakistan’s economic survival. It should be fencing its borders with Pakistan to make them impermeable and be thoroughly prepared to fight Pakistan and China simultaneously at a minimum, to a standstill. American and British experts predict that the demise or dissolution of Pakistan would hurt India the most. They have been wrong many times before in their policies in the Middle East, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and now Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen. It is conceivable that by sheer chance they could turn out right once, so India should prepare to insulate itself from the failed state of Pakistan, in case they are right.

Our past experience in helping the birth of Bangladesh turned out to be bitter draft for India until the recent sanity of its current government. The Bangladeshis and some of their governments overlooked the killing and rape of nearly a million of its citizens by the army of West Pakistan and allowed AlQaeda and Islamist terrorists to thrive in Bangladesh and once again became chummy with the Pakistani oppressors on the basis of the commonality of Islam. Fortunately the daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rehman has seen the light and is trying to punish the collaborators.

Manmohan Singh is the perfect example of Santayana’s quote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. (Hindi Chini Bhai Bhai and then 1962, Bangladesh 1971 and then SMR murdered, coup and Islamist extremism and now aid and groveling in Afghanistan and return of the Taliban). His foreign policy is like the Cargo Cult like Blanche Dubois in “A Streetcar Named Desire”, dependent on the kindness of strangers.
 
Unfortunately many Indian politicians, pundits and media mavens belong to the same denomination. They carp about why the US does not chastise or punish Pakistan and favor India. It is about time they wake up from their wishful thinking and dream state. The US does not give two hoots about India or for that matter any other country. It acts in its own interest and will not abandon Pakistan as long as it can exploit it and needs it. It also cannot antagonize China yet. Sometime in the future when the time is right it will stiff China, renege on its debt and tell it to go take a hike. Currently its and the West’s focus is Islam. It does not have India’s slave mentality and does not go begging bowl in hand and telling its occupier “Aap to humaare mai baap hai” (you are our mother and father) as our Indian sepoys and police would say to their British officers, while dying in their service and fighting their own compatriots (read Paul Scott’s quartet “Jewel In The Crown”) 
   
Cartoon by Sagar Kumar