Indian Hard-Line Despair and Pakistani Governmental Helplessness in the Face of Pakistani Terrorism


Pakistan has been claiming that India is not only moving troops to the border-- at least three corps, last I read, in an Indian newspaper website-- but has activated its "forward airbases", whatever that means.

What really makes all this futile, as far as diplomacy goes, and the American government at least is guilty of either not understanding or deliberately downplaying this, is that apparently a great proportion of the Pakistani public supports the Taliban, supports Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (variously transliterated), supports al Qaeda, supports Hamas, etc., etc., etc., including in Pakistan's military, and in particular its apparently completely uncontrollable Inter-Service Intelligence agency (ISI), rendering any Pakistani government completely unable to deal effectively with any of the foregoing, even though the vast majority of the victims of Islamic Theocratic terrorism in the world in general and Pakistan in particular are Moslems, co-religionists of such terrorists who either aren't "holy" enough in the eyes of those who consider themselves "holiest" of all, or are simply pawns to be killed as needed in terror-campaigns by the latter.

Indeed, a sizable proportion of the Pakistani public, if not an actual majority, apparently believe that the Mumbai assault was waged by non-Pakistanis (Mossad etc.) with the intention of scapegoating Pakistan (ditto 9/11, with the aim of scapegoating Moslems in general or the Taliban or Saudi Arabia) . . . .
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/dec/29/alice-in-nuclear-paki...

Hence, the original shock and sympathy and offers of cooperation with India by the new Pakistani government immediately after the Mumbai assault, followed very quickly by the retreat from all that, and ever since the dizzying Pakistani carousel of sometimes sympathy and offers of cooperation and sometimes denial and defiance.

And behind all this, Pakistan's nukes, that gift of China's proliferation strategy to the world, of which it can only be asked again and again, "In whose hands?" . . . .