Was It Something We Said, Pakistan?

Recent events in Pakistan lead me to believe that we can no longer count them as allies on the war against terrorists. Consider just three of these events:

A. Pakistan decided to stop searching for Osama bin-Laden. Everyone believes he is hiding in the eastern part of their country, but the Pakistani government doesn’t feel like looking for him anymore.

B. Pakistan has called a truce with the recently re-energized Taliban. Hmmm...

C. Every time our government calls Pakistan we get a busy signal. Then when Pakistan does call back, they reverse the charges!

Okay, I made up that third event, but still things don’t appear to be that friendly between our two countries anymore. These developments will make extradition of bin-Laden a little trickier than we originally thought. Of course, we are getting ahead of ourselves since in the last five years we haven’t been able to apprehend him. Justice is a moot point when you can’t locate the accused.

The futile search for bin-Laden is making the United States intelligence and law enforcement agencies look very bad. I can favorably compare their efforts to that of the Keystone Kops, but even that one might be a stretch. Come on guys! We can’t find some old guy sitting in a cave with all of the satellite surveillance cameras available to us? Oh, that’s right, all that technology is being trained on law-abiding Americans. I keep forgetting that fact.

I wonder if the Bush Administration saw this coming, or were they blind-sided by Pakistan’s apparent about face. Shouldn’t they be required to give us two weeks notice like this:

Dear U.S.A.:

We are tired of playing with you and we are going to play with the radicals that you love to hate. Farewell, you great Satan!

Respectfully,

Pakistan

P.S. Osama says hello and he sends his hatred.

Or did this all spring from some misunderstanding between the United States and Pakistan? Was it something we did, or something we said to make Pakistan go to the other side? Okay, so there was that war where we pushed out your hateful Taliban regime, then left your country in a shambles while we toddled off to destroy some imaginary weapons held by another country, but is that any reason to bring them back to power?

Pakistan, are you getting tired of our American influence in your world? Do you despise our values, our religious beliefs, our Starbucks, our McDonalds, our Wal-Marts? Truth be told, some of us are tired of those things too, but that’s not the point.

The point is today, on the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on American soil, those of us who are not possessed with extremist thought should find common ground to make the world more secure for everyone – Christian, Muslim, or Jew. That is not likely to happen. What will most likely happen is a solemn moment to remember our dead, and then their memory will be exploited by people on both sides bent on achieving their extremist goals. We will most likely hear calls for more vigilance, which will be interpreted by the other side as more saber rattling.

No, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to be secure in a hostile world. There’s also nothing wrong with questioning policies that are destroying the lives of innocent people here and abroad. There’s also nothing wrong with moderate, common sense notions of peace for all mankind.