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Politics : The Obama - Clinton Disaster -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GROUND ZERO™ who wrote (61338)	12/4/2011 10:25:01 AM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 103300

Zakaria: Pakistan - friends without benefits Zakaria: Pakistan - friends without benefits By Fareed Zakaria 12:06 PM ET December 1st, 2011 globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com It is difficult to find a country on the planet that is more anti-American than Pakistan. In a Pew survey this year, only 12% of Pakistanis expressed a favorable view of the U.S. That number has probably dipped even lower in the wake of the NATO air attack on a Pakistani army post that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. Pakistan’s leaders are only slightly better disposed since they continue to support militias in Afghanistan that wage war on Americans. Populist rage and official duplicity have built up even though over the past decade, Washington has lavished Pakistan’s government with praise and aid, the latter totaling $20 billion. It is time to recognize that the U.S.’s Pakistan policy is just not working. I write this as someone who has consistently supported engaging with the Pakistani government as the best of bad options. But the evidence that this engagement is working is thin - and gets thinner with every passing month. Supporting Islamabad has been premised on two arguments. The first is that if we don’t, the Pakistani government could collapse and the country’s nuclear weapons could fall into the wrong hands, perhaps even ending up with al-Qaeda. This misunderstands the problem. Pakistan is not Somalia. It has been ruled by a professional military for most of its independent existence, even when there has been a nominally civilian government in charge—as there is today. There have been no Gaddafiesque colonels’ coups in Pakistan; instead, the entire military, with its command chain intact, has moved to replace the civilian government. The military remains widely admired as a national institution that works. The second argument is the one given by businesses when they pay off the Mafia: we need to keep these guys as allies, or else they will become enemies. The problem with this protection racket is that it isn’t working. Admiral Mike Mullen finally said publicly what insiders have said privately for years: Pakistan’s army, despite getting over a quarter of its budget from Washington, funds and arms the most deadly terrorist group in South Asia. Read the rest of my column over at TIME.com. Post by: CNN's Fareed Zakaria