Foreign Policy

Pakistan’s Terror Ties May Become Undeniable

While most people are normally cyni cal of any of our “allies” in the Middle East, it’s important to note clarifying events that make these notions undeniable. One such is playing out in this New York federal court case.

Read the details here: Pakistan’s ISI fights lawsuit linking it to Mumbai attacks

If we are able to draw ties between the Pakistani Intelligence service and the terrible Mumbai attacks, it will no longer be tenable for the Obama administration to ignore the role Pakistan is playing in ““critical planning, material support, control and coordination” of terror events.

Officially, Pakistan denies harboring Osama and the Obama administration continues to defend our erstwhile ally in the war on terror. It must be noted that in the 2008 presidential debate, Obama defended his position that we should unilaterally attack Osama in Pakistan despite their protests, if we had information of his whereabouts. His detractors included his democratic competitor, Hilary Clinton, and many conservatives, including John McCain and Sarah Palin.

So should we abandon our diplomatic ties with a lukewarm ally when we have such evidence that they have been harboring terrorists and aiding terrorist attacks on the West?

Certainly India would prefer that. As Victor Davis Hanson, noted historian, has said, India is the most like us in the region, being an English-speaking, Westernized Democracy that has faced fierce Islamist attacks itself (hear his comments in this Richochet Podcast).

Hanson criticizes our diplomatic position between the two as a relic of Cold War thinking, as India had ties to our Soviet enemy. Given these events that show Pakistan’s duplicity, it may time, as he says, to “outsource Afghanistan and Pakistan to India.”

How would Pakistan react to such a change in American foreign policy? It is clear that they are very threatened by India reaching out to Afghanistan, and providing aid their government. One wonders if India is as foolish as America has been in thinking that financial aid will insure the loyalty of any Muslim nation.

Certainly one of the reasons the West has had to give Pakistan such deference is their possession of nuclear arms, being the only Muslim nation to do so. But is this enough to keep us from continually ignoring their terrorist ties?