The United States today is in a state of crisis and 'is at war against a far reaching network of violence and hatred' is a reality that was rightly observed by President Obama in his inaugural address to the nation. No nation today is more at war against the United States and no nation nurtures such a wide network of Jihadi terrorism organizations preaching hatred against the United States as Pakistan.

The war in Afghanistan against the United States by the Al Qaeda and the Taliban originates from Pakistani territory and facilitated by Pakistan Army assistance and support. It is wrong to assume that it is the Afghans who are battling America in a peoples upsurge. If that had been the case then the United States could not have marched into Kabul in early 2002; it was the Northern Alliance which spearheaded the displacement of the hated Taliban regime from Kabul on behalf of the United States.

Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar and the Al Qaeda and Taliban cadres did not evaporate into thin air with the American takeover of Afghanistan. Pakistan welcomed them into safe sanctuaries and safe havens in Pakistan territory where they still continue and kept out of reach of the Americans by the Pakistan Army and its notorious intelligence agency ,the ISI. It is from these bases in Pakistan that is spearheaded currently the Taliban operations against American and NATO Forces in Afghanistan and attempting to prevent the stabilization of Afghanistan by the United States.

Pakistan is acknowledged as the most anti-American nation in the Moslem world despite the United States munificence in terms of billions of dollars of military and economic aid given to Pakistan in the last sixty years. More particularly since the 1990s, Pakistan has also emerged as the epicenter of Jihadi terrorism so well documented by American analysts like Yousef Boddansky.

The major targets of this Jihadi terrorist network spawned by the Pakistan Army earlier in Taliban-governed Afghanistan and now in Pakistan's frontier areas, have been the United States, the European Union and India, besides Israel. Has the United States and the West realized the gravity of this targeting that in the Mumbai 9/11 attacks by Pakistani terrorists on the Taj and Oberoi Hotels they deliberately sought out and killed Americans, Europeans and Israeli citizens besides the attack on the predominantly Israeli occupied building Narriman House.

It is high time that the United States recognizes that more than Iran, Syria or the Islamic militias of the Middle East the gravest threats to United States national security arise from the Al Qaeda and Taliban groups cloistered in sanctuaries protected by the Pakistan Army. The next 9/11 on the United States or the terrorist nuclear improvised device attack on USA would most probably emanate from Pakistan.

Indian terrorism experts and strategic analysts were continuously projecting in their writings for the last seven years that Pakistan was 'double-timing' the United States in terms of controlling access of the Taliban into Afghanistan but presumably all this was dismissed by US authorities as opinionated and biased reports.

The Afghanistan War to be successfully prosecuted by the United States would essentially require that the United States de-link Pakistan from its Afghan operational strategies. It would also require that the United States no longer condones or is permissive of Pakistan's strategic delinquencies and 'rogue state' policies.

For far too long the United States policy establishment has bee in a 'state of denial' regarding Pakistan. Pakistan has not been a strategic asset for the United States but a strategic mill-stone around the United States neck and in the process distorting US policies in South Asia.

The United States to safeguard its national security can no longer postpone the 'strategic disciplining' of Pakistan.