While in Pakistan last week, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton decided to take the blunt route with international relations.
She told reporters that Pakistan needs to press the hunt for al-Qaida within its borders. The U.S. has long asserted that al-Qaida’s leader, Osama bin Laden, and senior lieutenants of the organization operate out of the rugged terrain of Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan.
“I find it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn't get them if they wanted to,” she said.
It’s a stunningly hypocritical statement.
If the United States military, with its thousands of troops and advanced military technology has been unable to find al-Qaida and bin Laden, how can Pakistan be expected to?
The Sept. 11 attacks occurred eight years ago, and the U.S. is no closer to finding the al-Qaida leaders than when American troops invaded Afghanistan after the attacks.
Clinton’s comments weren’t only hypocritical, they were insensitive — she said them just one day after 100 people were killed in a Pakistan market by an insurgent bombing. It was the deadliest attack in the country since 2007.
Pakistan not only faces international pressure to pull its weight when it comes to al-Qaida, it's dealing with the fact its people are being killed off by frequent bombings.
The situation of the U.S. is much different: Though the country’s soldiers are being killed in Afghanistan, its domestic population at home is much safer from the daily threat of terrorist violence.
And it’s not like Pakistan is sitting around doing nothing. It is currently involved in a major offensive against insurgents in an area of the country called South Waziristan.
This comes on the heels of a summer offensive in a different area of Pakistan that displaced thousands of the area’s civilian residents.
Here again, Pakistan not only needs to fight, it needs to disturb full swaths of its population in the process, something the U.S. doesn’t have to worry about.
The U.S. needs to get out of this business of pointing fingers and look at what it needs to do to flush out the al-Qaida.
Or, the next thing you know, the U.S. will be saying it’s Canada's fault bin Laden hasn’t been found.
