Limits of Patience

As in intolerable, excruciating, irritating, exasperating, infuriating.  Are there limits to patience?  It wouldn't really seem so, given the relationship that has existed and been exhausted to the point of being extinguished, between the United States and Pakistan.  After all, there is nothing whatever new about the relationship.  It has hoary whiskers.

Billions are regularly transferred from the U.S. treasury to the hot, grasping hands of the Pakistani military machine.  This is the United States offering assistance to a colleague-state, another nuclear-armed country, albeit one far from its shores.  This is the way that America ensures loyalty in a battle against fanaticism, the kind that threatens to upturn all norms within the Western world.

Of course, in Pakistan that fanaticism comes with the territory.  It is an integral portion of Islam, one which has festered and grown and infected other countries with the ardent viciousness of its holy struggle to rescue the world from its impure state of impiety.  The madrassas established and paid for by Saudi Arabia did their work well, infiltrating the minds of ignorant peasant masses to produce martyrs.

And those martyrs joined with the fierce tribal mujahadeen of Waziristan and the Northern Territories to follow the orders of the Pakistan military and its secret intelligence services.  Their first order of business was Indian Kashmir, fanning out to produce atrocities in India, proving they could access the most hitherto-secure sites to convey their message of neighbourly love.

And then, Afghanistan became another neighbour sorely in need of attention.  To that end the Afghan Taliban were given haven, training, orders and weapons.  Pakistan was pleased to silently and discreetly proffer haven to al-Qaeda, and to express puzzlement at every opportunity that their armed forces were unable to discover where they were located, but certainly not in Pakistan.

And now, Leon Panetta, the U.S. secretary of defence has the unmitigated nerve to proceed with warning Pakistan that they are "reaching the limits of our patience".  Why in the world would someone of his rank so antagonize such trusted allies?  Safe haven for the Taliban?  Not bloody likely.  Association with the Haqqani Network?  Pure, unadulterated slander.

"We are reaching the limits of our patience here, and for that reason it is extremely important that Pakistan take action to prevent this kind of safe haven from taking place and allowing terrorists to use their country as a safety net in order to conduct their attacks on our forces.  We have made that very clear time and time again and we will continue to do that, but as I said, we are reaching the limits of our patience."

Who. Do. They. Think. They. Are?

Pakistan too has reached the limits of its patience.  What kind of ally is it who continually breaches the sovereignty of a friendly country?  Does Pakistan fly drones over Washington?  It is unfathomable why Washington insists it will continue to deploy those killing machines in their debased search for al-Qaeda members and Taliban leadership, within Pakistan.

Islamabad made it clear that they consider such hostile acts an imperious insult to the country.  Not insulting enough that Pakistan's honour was so compromised by the Abbottabad attack on the bin Laden compound.  And now a drone strike killing Abu Yahya al-Libi?   Exactly how much humiliation is Pakistan expected to tolerate?