When President Bush suggested recently that Iran was protecting some Al-Qaida fighters, the Iranian foreign ministry angrily rejected his remarks and said they were groundless. When at the height of the war on Afghanistan, the United States asked Lebanon to freeze the funds of Hezbollah, Lebanon rejected the demand. On what planet lies Iran, on what planet Lebanon?
Arafat's great sin, the one that rankles the most in Israeli eyes, is his not moving decisively enough against the militants of Hamas. He could take a leaf from our book, for in one swoop we have done to our Hamas outfits, Jaish and the Lashkar, what Arafat, the king of compromise, still dare not do to his. No wonder Mr Advani has described General Musharraf's speech as "path-breaking". We leave even our rivals groping for the right words. What about the United States? It is used to arm-twisting but perhaps not to such ready compliance. Our arms are being twisted from the moment we signed up for loyal service in Afghanistan and, far from resisting, like judo experts we do a somersault the moment the least pressure is applied.
Riding a crest of self-congratulation, we are saying that the steps we have announced against religious extremism herald our entry into the modern world. We first entered the modern world in September when we joined the American war effort. We are entering the modern world a second time by rolling up the business of 'jihad' in Kashmir. At this rate, we should be twice as modern as any other country.
The question is not whether the steps we have taken are right or wrong. We had no business being the uncles of the Taliban. We had no business hijacking the freedom struggle in Kashmir by foisting our own creatures upon it. The question is: why couldn't we see the light ourselves? Why did we have to be kicked into doing the wrong thing?
As it is, both in Afghanistan and Kashmir we have done the right thing at the wrong time and under the wrong kind of stimulus. India has reason enough to rejoice. For the first time in Pakistan's history a Pakistani leader has moved to meet Indian demands under the shadow of a virtual Indian ultimatum.
General Musharraf's keenly-awaited address to the nation was brilliant more for its camouflage than its substance. While addressing New Delhi and Washington he made it appear as if his principal concern lay with the dangers of religious extremism at home. Placatory remarks dressed in the colours of defiance: therein lay the trick of his 'historic' address.
Forgotten was the war cry uttered in September, "Lay off". Gone was the subtle distinction, which we had hitherto pressed, between terrorism and a just freedom struggle. All that remained beneath the camouflage was a plain disavowal of Kashmiri 'jihad'. There would have been merit in the decision had it come from within. But we took it because of Indian threats and American pressure. To the threat of war from India in the early fifties Pakistan's first prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, responded with a clenched fist. Where was Pakistan's fist now? Lost somewhere in the bowels of Afghanistan.
Why not then put our bombs and missiles in storage? It is unseemly to wear a snarl on our lips when within our hearts beats the spirit of compromise. Of what use the complicated paraphernalia of an extended militarism when of all the manoeuvres of war it is the strategic U-turn - the U-turn forced by external pressure - which holds us in thrall?
Who is to tell us that at our cleverest we often sound at our clumsiest? The writ of the state must be restored, said General Musharraf in his historic address. Does he have no idea of the devastating self-indictment contained in these words? He has been around for 27 months, a period long enough to turn any enterprise around. What has he been doing all this time if he is still lamenting the lost authority of the state?
As for the maulvis of Pakistan, they have become the latest national scapegoats. That they have much to answer for is beyond dispute. At their hands the nation has been fed a diet of intolerance, bigotry and misplaced zeal. But it is only fair to say that even in condemning them a semblance of balance should be retained. Are the Maulvis and Beards responsible for all the country's problems? Are they responsible for the country's mistimed wars and other adventures? Some of them were the cannon fodder of 'jihad' all right. But were they the authors of Pakistan's Afghan and Kashmir policies?
Let Pakistan's maulanas and muftis carry the burden of their own sins. But let them not be made to carry the sins of others. Our behaviour in this respect is no different from that of the man who is beaten in the street but comes home and starts yelling at his wife. Threatening us with war and punishment was India. But we have turned our ire against the maulvi as the source of all our misfortunes.
By joining America's war effort we thought that we had neutralized the threat from India and indeed left India out in the cold. Now it turns out that it is we who were caught in a bind: helpless then, helpless now, but justifying every turnaround, every twist in the wind, by a reference to that mystical entity, the national interest. Eve would have fewer faces than the many faces of our national interest.We have a huge defence establishment. Britain, after the cuts inspired by the end of the cold war, has an army of 106,000 men and women. We have five times that number. In the light of recent events is it not reasonable to ask, what for?
Getting the sequence of events straight is important. After the attack on the Indian parliament when the US and India started turning the heat on us, and we realized that our earlier calculations about India being isolated were wrong, we started moving against the 'jihadi' organizations and arrested both Hafiz Saeed of Lashkar and Maulana Azhar of the Jaish. But India was not satisfied. Perceiving our weakness and assured of American backing, it thundered for more.
With greater grit on our side we could have said that as we were already dismantling the politics of 'jihad' we would move at our own pace and would not be pushed around. But we succumbed to the pressure and started preparing for another historic about-face.
The choice was not between war and peace. For all the hype from India, it was no child's play to impose a war on Pakistan. The choice was between standing fast and beating a retreat. India glared and we blinked. India bluffed and we could not call its bluff. Now we are all for peace and modernization, our martial bluster replaced by the cooing of the dove. Let us for argument's sake swallow the fiction that forsaking the cult of 'jihad' we are reverting to the vision of the Quaid and building a modern Pakistan. The question we are not asking is whether we needed Mr Advani and Mr George Fernandes to make us return to the vision of the Quaid? Mr Jaswant Singh chuckling over his whiskey: is this too far-fetched a vision under the circumstances?
No, I shall be making no request to GHQ to join my regiment. Instead, I'll probably put in an application for two squares of land in Bahawalpur, the inalienable prerogative of every senior officer, and for a residential plot in Chaklala. I may not have been a senior officer, having left quite early, but Pakistan having made known its pacifist intentions, there is no reason why I should remain behind the spirit of the times.