US Vice-President Joe Biden, addressing troops during a visit to Baghdad, has said that the American military mission to Iraq had changed, to Operation New Dawn. Though he claimed that the Iraqi people were now ready to take charge of their own security, after they had rejected the violence of Al-Qaeda, the Operation is just a way of covering the American withdrawal from the country which it had invaded in 2003, and where it has not achieved the goals it had set itself. It faces a similar problem in Afghanistan, which it had invaded even earlier, back in 2001, where it has not been able to establish security even for itself, let alone for the regime it has imposed. It must also be remembered that it is destabilising not just for Afghanistan by its presence there, but the entire region. Its most destabilising action has been to give India a role in Afghanistan. Indias use of this access to destabilise Pakistan, even though it has no historical or ethnographic links, as Pakistan does, should have opened American eyes to its real intentions, but the lure of having it as its policeman in the region seems to have made the USA turn a blind eye to Indian machinations. However, the USA seems to continue to follow its previous pattern of doing things first in Iraq, even though it invaded it later. Its withdrawal from Iraq means a withdrawal from Afghanistan, and this is something for which the Pakistani state, which had put everything at the disposal of the Americans, needs to prepare. It should abandon an alliance which is not only resented by the people, but also allows the USA imperial rights over it. If the impending American withdrawal from Afghanistan, which is a certainty after the withdrawal from Iraq, is not prepared with the utmost caution by Pakistan, it could be an even bigger disaster than the invasion itself. Unfortunately, they were not prescient then, and perhaps will not be now.