The American Spectator

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Special Report

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Remarkably, the White House has agreed to the ban with hardly a whimper, while rewarding Musharraf for his "strong cooperation" with long-sought F-16 fighter jets and other military gear it can use against archenemy India, a true friend of America who like us has been a victim of Islamic terror, not a generator of it.

So, America is counting almost exclusively on Pakistan's military to hunt down its Enemy No. 1 and destroy his new terrorist hatcheries.

But don't hold your breath: It was Pakistani military intelligence that introduced bin Laden to Taliban leader Mullah Omar, also still at large. It even tipped him off before the U.S. first bombed his Afghan camps in 1998, according to the 9/11 Commission Report. And by many accounts, Pakistani intelligence remains "in bed with bin Laden," as Clarke has put it.

Which begs the obvious question of why we're still relying on people more loyal to our enemy to protect us from it. More to the point: Why do we keep rewarding them?

Given President Bush's gushing support in the face of Musharraf's spotty results, you have to wonder who's running our war on terror -- Bush or Musharraf? Who's really in command of our security? Why is Bush deferring authority over a matter of life and death for potentially every American?

After 9/11, Bush demanded the Taliban "close immediately and permanently every terrorist training camp in Afghanistan."

Yet Pakistan, the cradle of the Taliban movement, gets no such ultimatums regarding its own terror camps. It gets F-16s instead.

topics:
Islam, Military, Pakistan