What can you say to people who sent combat pilots and fighter aircraft to attack Israel in 1973, yet claim that it is Israel that wishes to destroy Pakistan? Too bad you’ve left out the “Israeli lobby is behind American-Indian alliance” conspiracy theory which is so popular in the Land of the Pure. Also, India turning a Muslim Afghanistan into its operational base against Pakistan? India seeking to undo the partition and absorb millions of Muslims by destroying Pakistan? Good Lord in Haven.
Comment by Haim – August 3, 2010 @ 9:06 am
Stop. Please.
I’ve played Squash with Pakis. I’ve worked with them in America on software projects.
I’ve listened to them whine like little girls about how America is at fault for everything bad, most especially everything bad that happens to them. I’ve heard them intone for hours about how if the USA would just abandon Israel, everything would be peaches and cream.
Pakistan is a nation of whining day laborers. They can silk screen T shirts but they can’t get their own homes out of the mud. And they can’t see the obvious, namely that their willingness to cut Al Queda slack dooms them to the dust bin of history.
Want to make a sure bet on the winner every time? Bet on the Indians.
Pakistan is french for “loser”.
Comment by Paul A'Barge – August 3, 2010 @ 9:10 am
It is hard to get past your statement regarding the murderous Muslim Jihad against India that a “tolerant and complex civilization grew up across the subcontinent”.
In his Story of Civilisation, respected scholar and historian
Will Durant Wrote that “the Mohammedan conquest of India was probably the bloodiest story in history”. Tens of millions of forced conversions at the tip od sword and scimitar were preceded by the sheer and unimaginable terror of 60,000,000 – 80,000,000 slaughtered, yet you write that “Hindus and Muslims sometimes fought but often they lived together reasonably well and, as Muslims remember it, this was a happy and prosperous time.”. No wonder! Muslims looted and slaughtered their way through yet another vibrant civilization and lived high for a brief time on the stolen plunder. Today Muslims depict themselves as the victim in this monstrous chapter of their violent, blood stained history.
Why repeat their gargantuan lies about themselves? Why nurture their hideous sense of victimhood when they mass murdered Hindus to establish Islam in India !? No real understanding can come from repeating the lies, distortions, and propaganda of Islamic Jihad.
Understand the true imperial, genocidal supremacist nature of Islamic Jihad, and that will explain everything one needs to know about why Muslims in Pakistan (or everywhere else) are filled with rage and hatred.
Comment by Morton Doodslag – August 3, 2010 @ 9:26 am
A great article in that it lays out, in a comprehensive manner, Pakistani perceptions.
However, I can’t help but think that the root of the root is a national personality disorder that goes something like this:
Sixty-three years after Partition, the Nation Next Door is a tolerant, democratic society and an economic powerhouse.
Sixty-three years after Partition, Pakistan is, well, pretty much the same social, political and economic basket case it’s always been.
Now I’m a database guy (and a policy junkie), but if I were a psychologist, I would diagnose this as Borderline Personality Disorder… DSM-IV code 301.83. 
He gives the disease code too
BPD patients “….tend to see things in terms of extremes, either all good or all bad. They also typically view themselves as victims of circumstance and take little responsibility for themselves or their problems.”
This is a common problem with certain types of societies in this part of the world, c.f. Palestine (and Hamas,) Syria, Lebanon, etc. Interestingly, Iraq alone seems to be well on the road to recovery from national BPD.
Best regards,
SteveR
Comment by Steve Rosenbach – August 3, 2010 @ 9:43 am
Enough is enough.
Pakistan needs to stop blaming India and take responsibility for it’s own failure. Pakistan can’t blame anyone but itself for failing at establishing a stable democracy and an economic system that attracts foreign capital.
Both India and Pakistan started as almost equals–two young democracies free from British occupation. Since deregulation of Indian economy in the 1990′s India has surpassed Pakistan in growth. As a result of it it has become a strong regional player. Not to mention, moderate Hindu philosophy resonates better with westerners.
The truth of the matter is when you raise snakes as pets to use against others, you can’t complain when they bite you. Pakistan’s ISI has routinely funded terrorists to gain control of Kashmir. Even the most
recent terrorist attacks in Bombay pointed towards Pakistan and ISI. They unleashed it…now they get to suffer. Growing up in India and hearing about daily bombings in Kashmir is not a distant past for some of us.
India can not be safe and secure until Pakistan is safe and secure. And the only way to that for Pakistan is economic prosperity which requires stable democracy (or Chinese style Market Communism,which is impossible at this point for Pakistan).
Pakistan is here because of their own mistakes and no one but Pakistan can get itself out of this mess.
Comment by SuchaB – August 3, 2010 @ 9:44 am
Excellent start. It’s amusing to read Allan Drury’s famous novel of Washington in the 1950s. At the time, India was hostile and a client of the USSR. The image of the Pakistani ambassador in that novel is exactly the image of Pakistanis today.
Frankly, I think the problem is Islam. Show me a successful society in which Islam is the dominant religion. There are more Muslims in India than Pakistan. How many know that ?
Comment by Mike_K – August 3, 2010 @ 10:16 am
Paul is sooo right!
My interaction with Pakis in the high tech world was just the same. Americans were all bad so they were not part of the team until the knowledge hogs blew up something and THEN it was important to make sure everybody knew what they’d been scheming to do. Wife’s night out with the neigbors and the kids left at home? Shrill denunciations for days. Welcome to America! “Pakistan is french for ‘loser’”!!!!! This is why our foreign policy is so corrupt. We give our tax dollars to tyrannical tribes like the Pakis and Norks. If our foreign aid was based on a policy of…perhaps…
NO money to regimes that don’t support 1) First Amendment, 2) Second Amendment, 3) Article 1, section 2…we’d be building freedom with every dollar instead of supporting bozos.
Comment by SenatorMark4 – August 3, 2010 @ 10:22 am
Some things never change. This is just bog-standard Muslim whining about the fact that they aren’t the overlords anymore in ____ (insert India, Israel, Spain, … as needed). According to Muslim official history, once upon a time Muslims ruled these lands, everything was peaches and cream, and everybody was happy to be ruled by the caliph. Pay no attention to the stories of the non-Muslims, the millions put to the sword or sold into slavery and concubinage.
“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many
countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the
next of its dignity and sanctity.
The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.
Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities – but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.”
– Sir Winston Churchill (The River War, 1899)
Comment by craig – August 3, 2010 @ 10:39 am
WRM,
The key issue for American counter-terrorism policy is that Pakistan is what we fear Iran will become — a nuclear armed, terrorist supporting, rogue, failed state.
We have allies inside that failed state dealing with the Islamists, but often times we cannot tell the non-nutballs from the nutballs there.
AND NEITHER CAN OUR PAKISTANI ALLIES!
Whole ISI bases were involved with developing the Lashkar-i-Taiba threat to India, and not just via supporting Kashmiri terrorists. The ISI trains terrorists as part of nominal anti-terrorist training. (It’s easy with suitable compartmentalization and “need-to-know”.)
As a result, the Islamist factions inside the Pakistani state have more deniability for terrorist operations than the Mullah’s of Iran.
There is no one person or ruling faction in Pakistan who can enforce peace over all the factions and turn ISI’s Islamist terrorists off, be they Kashmiri, Afghan or Al-Qaeda.
See this comment from the threat watch blog on Pakistani senior general General Kiyana:
http://threatswatch.org/rapidrecon/2008 ... osis-mumb/
…it has to be understood that General Kiyani – head of Pakistan’s military and thus effectively its military intelligence (ISI) – while admirably stalwart against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in the North West and tribal areas, has always been equally stalwart regarding the Pakistani conflict with India over disputed Kashmir.
General Kiyani may have intended a minor operation for Kashmir and was almost certainly in the dark about the metamorphosis of the operation into a Mumbai massacre, but the law of unintended consequences holds little acquittal when leaders play with the fire of terrorism.
At this point, it is really hard to tell the difference between low to mid-level ISI, L-e-T, and Al-Qaeda — even for Pakistani generals.
Pakistan is Somalia with nukes.
This takes us to another hard geo-political reality.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki happened because America had the economy and the political will to both forge nuclear weapons and to use them to eliminate the threat. All it took was a Pearl Harbor to fatally enraging the American people and time.
Our Islamic terrorist foes in Pakistan are seeking to provide the Indian people with that same motivation to eliminate the threat a’la “Pakistan Delenda Est.”
And there is nothing America can do to stop this.
Comment by Trent Telenko – August 3, 2010 @ 11:00 am
worth of help.
. Whereas Murree will be able to sell Kingfisher only within Pureland thus corrupting the morals of pure folks with Yindoo beer, I say it is a conspiracy against the youth of pureland. If it makes business sense then there is no harm in promoting haraam beverage in pureland.