NYT story about Pakistan's vibrant and debilitating conspiracy culture.
America competes with India and Israel as the source of all perceived woes and indignities and injustices in Pakistan--in addition to the wider Muslim world.
This is the country we're betting on to make our withdrawal from Afghanistan work.
Americans may think that the failed Times Square bomb was planted by a man named Faisal Shahzad. But the view in the Supreme Court Bar Association here in Pakistan’s capital is that the culprit was an American “think tank.”
That is seriously infantile thinking from a group one would assume represents the best thought leadership in the country.
But it appears to be perfectly acceptable public dialogue inside Pakistan.
“When the water stops running from the tap, people blame America,” said Shaista Sirajuddin, an English professor in Lahore.
The problem is more than a peculiar domestic phenomenon for Pakistan. It has grown into a narrative of national victimhood that is a nearly impenetrable barrier to any candid discussion of the problems here. In turn, it is one of the principal obstacles for the United States in its effort to build a stronger alliance with a country to which it gives more than a billion dollars a year in aid.
The crux of the problem:
It does not help that no part of the Pakistani state — either the weak civilian government or the powerful military — is willing to risk publicly owning that relationship.
One result is that nearly all of American policy toward Pakistan is conducted in secret, a fact that serves only to further feed conspiracies. American military leaders slip quietly in and out of the capital; the Pentagon uses networks of private spies; and the main tool of American policy here, the drone program, is not even publicly acknowledged to exist.
The sad truth is that we are limited in our interactions with Pakistan to the tools and methods employed by that regime in its governance of the country.
The alternative is India, which has its own psychological peculiarities, like any long-abused colony.
But there are nothing in comparison, and virtually all of India's internal evolutions are trending in the right direction--unlike Pakistan, which seems to be regressing by the day (despite its bright future of just a few years ago). Some of that dynamic, stretching back decades now, can certainly be blamed upon the United States.
But it would appear that we are past the point of reason with this "ally."