As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton bids farewell to Pakistan and heads to the UAE, Pakistan's press presents her with a spectrum of the Nation, the News international, and the Daily Times.Not comforting for America to hear the liberal Daily Times remark, "Today, Pakistanis certainly don’t hate Al Qaeda as much as they hate the US."
At this point, I don't know that there's anything to be done to change the general attitude in Pakistan toward America.
ReplyDeleteOur pro-India policy is unforgivable and anything we do in Pakistan is viewed as an intervention.
The massive load of cash we gave them, for instance, has largely been damned by the population as a mechanism of control.
Clinton's trip was poorly timed at best. In my view, the best thing we could have done to help Pakistan would have been to allow the population a sense of military alone-ness in their incursion into southern Waz.
In going there and touting how much we support their cause in combating factional influence was, therefore, actually antithetical to our interests.
Antithetical is right. Timing wasn't necessarily the problem the way we analyze, Clinton could have got away with the same actions had she not challenged the Pakistani media and hyped her charm offensive. She set herself up for the impossible.
ReplyDeleteWe understand the need to visit Pakistan, but we completely agree with you. That government needs space, not US officials in every direction. Now Pakistan looks even more like a client state fighting America's war, which feeds the people's doubt and the TTP's propaganda.