All war, all the time

Since the conclusion of World War II politics in the South Asian subcontinent has displayed as much good sense as one would expect to find in the Middle East at any moment during the same era. And the United States was not an innocent party in the making of this sad history. Its meddling in the Indo-Pak conflict, its shameful betrayal of East Pakistan and the role it played in the genesis and course of the Afghan Civil War were just some of its most notable failures, mistakes which still haunt America, the subcontinent and the world.

Just recently the world was given additional evidence that this history casts a long shadow and that the United States has failed to learn from it:

With two missile strikes over the past week, the Obama administration has expanded the covert war run by the Central Intelligence Agency inside Pakistan, attacking a militant network seeking to topple the Pakistani government.

And:

The strikes are another' sign that President Obama is continuing, and in some cases extending, Bush administration policy in using American spy agencies against terrorism suspects in Pakistan, as he had promised to do during his presidential campaign.

While the Obama administration has yet to clarify its intentions with regards to Pakistan's crisis and to its recent military actions, although it is safe to say that the United States wishes the Pakistani state to survive this latest crisis, it is equally clear that America's post-1945 interventions into the area have done nothing to foster a regional commitment to generating peaceful and diplomatic solutions to its conflicts. In fact, the United States has augmented the regional inclination to disintegrate.

And 9.11, lest Americans forget, was just one instance of the "blowback" produced by this meddling.