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India-Pakistan
Delusions of grandeur
2011-01-09
After eight years as US president, during which Pakistanis probably burnt him in effigy virtually every day, Bush`s book mentions our country only 47 times on eight pages -- an average of one page per year.
This hope of tapping the US treasury was voiced so persistently that one wondered whether the purpose was to bolster the world against Bolshevism or to bolster Pakistan`s own uncertain position as a new political entity.
"In the weeks to come," Bourke-White wrote, "I was to hear the Quaid-i-Azam`s thesis echoed by government officials throughout Pakistan. `Surely America will build our army,` they would say to me. `Surely America will give us loans to keep Russia from walking in.` But when I asked whether there were any signs of Russian infiltration, they would reply almost sadly, as though sorry not to be able to make more of the argument. `No, Russia has shown no signs of being interested in Pakistan.`"

"This hope of tapping the US treasury was voiced so persistently that one wondered whether the purpose was to bolster the world against Bolshevism or to bolster Pakistan`s own uncertain position as a new political entity. Actually, I think, it was more nearly related to the even more significant bankruptcy of ideas in the new Muslim state -- a nation drawing its spurious warmth from the embers of an antique religious fanaticism, fanned into a new blaze."

In 63 years, little has changed. The menace now cited for tapping the US treasury is no longer communist Russia, it is terrorism. But simultaneous to seeking US assistance is our penchant for abusing the US and those we send to Washington as supplicants.
Posted by:john frum

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