Hitchens analysis on MMS visit and fallouts

Chris Hitchens is known for his outspoken views. His latest article on the peril of US ignoring India for support to terror havens Pak and Afghanistan clearly espouses a vision of a close US-India relationship which was not played by our politicians (for lack of vision) and by our media (for support of ideologies and religious affiliations).

That would have been bad enough at any time, but the visit was of unusual importance. It took place very close to the first anniversary of the Islamic terrorist assault on Mumbai, an attack for which Pakistan has only just begun to place some of its own nationals on trial. We are entering a week in which discussion of a new strategy on Afghanistan will become the dominant theme, and we are doing so having given the opinions of India and Indians one-millionth of the consideration awarded to a pair of trashy socialites.

These thoughts were released just before Mr.Obama's address about adding more troops in Af-Pak.
He hits the nail on the head when he clearly elucidates the double game played by the Pak military and ISI in promising to fight the Taliban and other minions whom they have grown over the last decade.

The enormous subventions given to the Pakistani elite in the "war on terror" are thus partly a subsidy to the very forces we claim to be fighting and partly a bribe to make them at least pretend to stop. Meanwhile, Pakistan's press and the remnant of its education system are virtual machines for the mass production of anti-American and anti-Semitic propaganda aimed at persuading people that the real enemy is the democratic secular West. And on top of all this, the country's "national hero" A.Q. Khan for many years enjoyed state collaboration in the running of a nuclear black market that shared fissile materials with countries like Libya and North Korea. Yet the Obama administration, phrasing its strategy for the crisis, cannot get beyond the silly and limited abbreviation Af-Pak.

Stronger words on policy have seldom been said.