I believe it was Eddie Murphy who framed the matter:

why is it when white folk enter a haunted house, they choose to stay?

Why is it that Hitchens' paints Pakistan in such a unfavorable, duplicitous, illegitimate, genocidal, untrustworthy light?

For decades as a communist sympathizer, Hitchens wrote about how Western nations used proxy states for their own geo-strategic interests. And how Western powers propped up dictators, generals, kings to advance these aims, including the aim of domestic economic liberalist capitalism. And how Western powers financed the militaries of these proxy states in order to gain the military's fealty and sway them to act in their interests.

Yet Hitchens wonderfully leaves out British and American legacy of manipulating Pakistan for Capitalist, Western and ultimately American geo-strategic interests.

As if the Pakistani intelligence agency, the ISI, and the Pakistani military are rogue powers that have functioned since Pakistan's independence without colloborating- nay- without SERVING American interests to a T.

Pakistan IS a haunted house of American intervention, manipulation, machination, infiltration. The number and significance of American backed coups in Pakistan are shocking. The role that America used Pakistan against India for decades while India was led by the Indian National Congress is completely left out by Hitchens. The fact that America supported Pakistani military coups and military dictatorships and armed Pakistan's military under the guise of the Eisenhower Doctrine and defense of FREEDOM, but extended it right up until this Bush War on Terror is completely ignored by Hitchens.

Hitchens, the Neo Conservative imperialist, would rather ignore the ghosts of American imperial sway in Pakistan, likely because it clashes with his imperious whims. Instead, he attacks the architecture of the house- 'ew, modernism'.

I'm sensitive to what you're saying (if what you're saying is that the US has callously interfered in Pakistani politics for its own ends for years now), but I'm not sure how your point changes our next steps. If ISI really were supporting Al Qaida, what solution would you propose, other than addressing the problem through Pakistan as well as through Afghanistan? My point is, even if we did bring this problem upon ourselves to a large extent, don't we still need to defend ourselves at the end of the day? (Unless your whole point is that you don't believe that ISI is in fact involved with Al Qaida?)

If you do have an idea as to how to render confrontation unnecessary, please speak up!

Wasn't the Taliban (& by extension, Al Qaeda??) as much a Jimmy Baker creation as much as an ISI one?

What he seems to be arguing is that the United States caused the problem in Pakistan and is therefore responsible for fixing it. However I fail to see your logic, and I am sure if I brought up the fact that the US had supported Saddam and his regime and was therefore responsible for eliminating it you would cry foul.

So your argument can therefore bring up 2 possible conclusions:

1) The US is responsible for fixing the decades old mess it made in Pakistan, and was therefore justified in its responsibility to try and fix the decades old mess it made in Iraq.

2) The US should take a page out of the post-colonial Africa handbooks of France and Belgium. It should either fully support its client regimes regardless of what horrible things they do (like France does in places like Chad) or it should simply leave them to their own problems (like Belgium did in Rwanda). Unfortunately this option either leads to the regression of US foreign policy back to a Cold War strongman approach, or allows for the free occurance of genocides such as in Rwanda or the former Yugoslavia.

Either way your logic is tragically flawed.

Pakistan is another third world rathole that wouldn't be missed by the civilized world if it blew itself up like a good little muslim tomorrow.

At the beginning, the problem was Communism.

Now, it is Islam disguised into terrorism.

An in the near future, the problem will certainly be Iran and or Pakistan regimes.

Get ready for the next happy nominees.

kacrowde:

I'm sensitive to what you're saying (if what you're saying is that the US has callously interfered in Pakistani politics for its own ends for years now), but I'm not sure how your point changes our next steps. If ISI really were supporting Al Qaida, what solution would you propose, other than addressing the problem through Pakistan as well as through Afghanistan? My point is, even if we did bring this problem upon ourselves to a large extent, don't we still need to defend ourselves at the end of the day? (Unless your whole point is that you don't believe that ISI is in fact involved with Al Qaida?)

If you do have an idea as to how to render confrontation unnecessary, please speak up!

My point is: America has been interfering in the course of politics, power, authority, sovereignty for 50 years in Pakistan. Al Qaida and the ISI are only a small facet born of that legacy.

Do I have answers to how to 'render conflict unnecessary'?

I don't mean to be judgemental, but your question reflects part of the problem. 'Conflict' is action. 'Action' is based on ideas. One must change the 'ideas' which drive conflict.

From my perspective, America needs to deal first with itself. This is a quote from president and war hero Dwight Eisenhower in 1961 upon his departure from office

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

40 years later and the CIA joined with the ISI to support the rise of the Taliban to power in Afghanistan. In fact, the spring of 2001, the Bush administration had Taliban energy officials in America in the hopes of them signing a contract with Enron to develop a pipeline from Turkmenistan to Quetto Pakistan. When the Taliban rejected the proposal, the CIA began invasion plans with the Northern Alliance to toppled the Taliban regime in Kabul.

1996-September 11, 2001: Enron Gives Taliban Millions in Bribes in Effort to Get Afghan Pipeline Built

The Associated Press will later report that the Enron corporation bribes Taliban officials as part of a “no-holds-barred bid to strike a deal for an energy pipeline in Afghanistan.” Atul Davda, a senior director for Enron’s International Division, will later claim, “Enron had intimate contact with Taliban officials.” Presumably this effort began around 1996, when a power plant Enron was building in India ran into trouble and Enron began an attempt to supply it with natural gas via a planned pipeline through Afghanistan (see 1995-November 2001 and June 24, 1996). In 1997, Enron executives privately meet with Taliban officials in Texas (see December 4, 1997). They are “given the red-carpet treatment and promised a fortune if the deal [goes] through.” It is alleged Enron secretly employs CIA agents to carry out its dealings overseas. According to a CIA source, “Enron proposed to pay the Taliban large sums of money in a ‘tax’ on every cubic foot of gas and oil shipped through a pipeline they planned to build.” This source claims Enron paid more than $400 million for a feasibility study on the pipeline and “a large portion of that cost was pay-offs to the Taliban.” Enron continues to encourage the Taliban about the pipeline even after Unocal officially gives up on the pipeline in the wake of the African embassy bombings (see December 5, 1998). An investigation after Enron’s collapse in 2001 (see December 2, 2001) will determine that some of this pay-off money ended up funding al-Qaeda. [Associated Press, 3/7/2002]

My next point is:

America needs to focus its energies on improving itself first and foremost.

Formally and publicly renouncing the ways of America's interventionist, interfering past is a first step for America to be safer.

Brokering more peaceful relations between India and Pakistan, ecspecially considering that America often encouraged Pakistan to be belligerent towards India, would also be a good step.

Letting Pakistan's internal politics run its course AFTER America pledges peaceful relations, noninterventionism, the end of financing corrupt Pakistani elite and military officers, would go a long way in regaining trust between Pakistan and America. Zardari, the new PM, has a 14% approval rating and he just now is in power. His future is grim.

Meanwhile, America needs to reinvest in America's infrastructure, education, and its most important resource: human resource.