How can Bush and his people do business with Pakistan if Americans are still haunted by the bogey of terrorism?

Bush brought zilch, and who is responsible? More on that later. Many a blossom bloomed and then lost its lustre. It was time-sensitive. The buds began to appear when George Bush confirmed his arrival in Pakistan. These buds started to open up as the visit drew closer. The night before Bush stealthily showed up on our soil, the buds turned into full blown analysts on America and its policies. I mean the pundits who sat in a huddle with the host in the middle before TV cameras second-guessing why, when, where and what Bush was carrying in his bag for us.

Each analyst and his anchor had a mouthful of wisdom to share with the viewers. Sitting on the other side of Atlantic with Europe and the Arab world in between, our gurus waxed knowledgeable on America. Not lagging behind were the op-ed pages of newspapers that spawned unending columns of writers posing as American experts/scholars.

Suddenly there was an information explosion in Pakistan.

Still, with our half-baked knowledge on all things American, the sleuths in the media got licked by the 700 strong American security men who fooled us into believing that George and Laura Bush were taking the Islamabad highway en route to go wherever they were camping for the night.

As darkness descended, so did silence. Not a car could be seen on the dual highway. Roads entering the highway were blocked with trees and police cars. The tall lamp posts stood sentinel, casting a spidery yellow light on the haunted highway. It was too quiet for comfort, too surreal for belief, as we waited for the VIP caravan to hurtle past any second. No one came. Bush had landed and whisked off on a helicopter to the American ambassador’s residence.

The decoy by the Americans had worked perfectly. Potential snipers and suicide bombers were taken on a wild goose chase and dumped by the wayside.

With Bush’s exit, TV pundits and writers are back. “We told you so,” is the line they are parroting. After the fact, that is.
The truth is that Bush is not America, unlike Musharraf, who sadly is Pakistan. There is more to America than Bush.

Do our illustrious writers and soothsayers here know how Pakistan and its people are viewed in America? Want to know? For the ordinary Americans, we don’t exist. Nor do they care. We only have an identity in very select circles like the right-wing think-tanks of Washington. And I have news for you. They don’t like us. One can tell these white male chauvinists to go to hell. But we can’t. They dictate the foreign policy to Bush and his White House.

The Washington-based powerhouse called the Heritage Foundation is universally acknowledged as America’s “shadow government”. Apart from sitting on sackloads of money, it’s a Masonic society of neo-conservatives, dubbed neo-cons — a cult that has become a household dread since George W’s ascension to power.

While Heritage Foundation folks have not yet raised any flaming red flags against Pakistan, they have nevertheless put out warnings for Americans and Europeans ‘stupid’ enough to do business with Islamabad.

America’s champion of “policy research and analysis”, the Heritage Foundation, over a decade has expertly expanded into the arena of world economics, becoming the godfather of “economic freedom” assigning itself the head examiner’s role of measuring the economic performance of all countries around the world “as a tool for policy-makers and investors”.
Assisting the foundation with its economic global gerrymandering is The Wall Street Journal, the promoter of neo-con agenda. For years, the journal’s editorial page has advocated America’s continuous meddling in foreign affairs so as to chart an international business climate favourable to its large multinational corporations.

“The journal has often published commentary pieces indicating that the US is in a war with Islam and that it needs to gain a foothold in the Middle East to squelch radical Islam and promote a secularized Islam in order to assure the expansion of its version of American democracy and capitalism (really fascism) to every corner of the planet,” writes economist Jim Grichar, once a Bush insider.

Their last “economic freedom index” has put Pakistan in 110th position out of 161 countries. Last year, we stood at 133. While we have improved, still our reputation as a basket case sticks. The index clearly said in 2005 that Pakistan’s “economy has been hampered by heavy state involvement, widespread corruption, political instability, chronic tensions with India, and low levels of foreign investment”.

Statistics from the World Bank, the IMF, the Economist Intelligence Unit and the US Trade Representative are tossed around freely by the authors of this index to lend it credence. The worst was the foreign investment variable, the bulk of which came in the shape of an indictment from the US Department of Commerce, who like the sod’s law believes that anything that can go wrong will go wrong:

“Reasons for low [foreign direct investment] inflows include significant security threats to foreign interests in Pakistan; concerns about political instability; inadequate infrastructure; delays in the privatization of state-owned enterprises; past protracted disputes between foreign investors and the government; piracy of intellectual property; arbitrary and non-transparent application of government regulations; and resistance to the adoption of new policies by some elements of federal and provincial bureaucracies who have not yet fully adjusted to the new, more open economic environment ...”

Small wonder then that George Bush didn’t get Musharraf to sign the much-touted investment treaty that Pakistan was hoping to clinch as a done deal with America.

Similarly, while our TV analysts are seized with the stereotyped questions on Al Qaeda and bin Laden, do you know that today in America, the number one question under discussion is how to prevent a UAE firm from buying the British P&O navigation company that is responsible for the security of American ports?

Why has the US media, the Capitol Hill and ordinary citizens ganged up against the UAE takeover? Because Americans don’t want a Muslim company in charge of the security of their ports. They don’t trust Muslims. When I raised this point during a TV discussion, I was asked by my host: “How does this concern Pakistan?”

Isn’t Pakistan a Muslim country which is seen by Americans as a country swiftly turning radical? How can Bush and his people do business with Pakistan if Americans are still haunted by the bogey of terrorism?

The Forbes magazine has put Pakistan among the top 10 travel dangerous destinations, warning American citizens to stay away from our country.

Want to know how Pakistanis in America are treated? Last year, we had a powerful congressman Rodney Frelinghuysen address us in New Jersey. The only complaint that the locals had to voice was about illegal immigrants who come to America and exploit the system.

I stood up and asked the amiable congressman why the legal immigrants were being discriminated against by Americans. While I got a polite response from him (he’s an astute politician who needs the immigrant vote to get reelected this November) some members of the audience showed their open hate against immigrants, the gist of which was: “Thank you for coming to our country. But we don’t need you anymore. Please leave.” Of course, they are all immigrants too but mostly from Italy and white.

And guess what, last week the American Senate gave a blank cheque to Bush to do as he pleased with foreigners suspected of terrorism with renewing the Patriot Act by an overwhelming majority.