On the morning of Monday, May 2, the people of Pakistan woke up to realise that, as in the devastating earthquake of 2005, the earth had shifted from beneath their feet, leaving gaping holes. There were holes in our stories, our theories, our beliefs, our convictions, in short, our invincibility. What does one do when ones mainstay or the fall-back position and secure comfort zone are exposed for being either two-faced or too incapable? The silence, that generally overcame all the lead players in the war on terror after the Abbottabad Osama Bin Gotten episode, was deafening for the Pakistanis. It also negated all the effort and help that Pakistan has given to America, as its leading ally in this ensuing war on terror for the last 10 years. There was nobody to stand up and wipe away the confusion. The fact that OBL was living most comfortably in a house built in a huge, sprawling open area, in the peaceful and touristy little town of Abbottabad, for all these years, is beyond imagination. It is also very insulting, in light of the fact that he was a sworn enemy of this country too and its policies, and that this war has cost Pakistan 34,000 innocent lives, with the number increasing at frequent intervals on a regular basis. The price that our citizens have paid for this war is far more than those of the United States of America. Apart from the loss of lives, we have been negatively impacted in other spheres like economy and societal norms. The pictures of the common Abbottabad men, women and children, now being flashed worldwide on television screens, speak volumes for the kind of people that we actually are, nave, innocent, peaceful, just waiting to be rescued from our defective national security paradigm pursued for many decades. While this may be a closure of sorts for the Ground Zero victims, it is a whole new chapter for Pakistan, its politicians, its establishment, its military and its people. We have to re-examine and re-scrutinise every aspect of this incident and decide on a firm position that is taken collectively, with only the supreme national interest of the country in mind. We have to re-imagine Pakistan. If we do not approve of America belittling our sovereignty, so should we object to any other foreign presence on our soil, notwithstanding the fact that they are supposed to be believers of the same faith and have learnt how to speak our languages too. Our outrage at the breach of our sovereignty must be the same for all outsiders. Both the civil and military establishment of Pakistan has to take a long, hard look at where we are and what led us here. They have to decide, at this critical juncture of our history, what sort of a country the hapless 170 million Pakistanis deserve to live in - prosperous, peaceful and stable - or one that the whole world views as an adversary. The response that came to the OBL episode from different government functionaries was strangely uncoordinated. The Ambassador to America, Hussain Haqqani, said that an enquiry will be held as to why there was such a massive intelligence failure while the Secretary for Foreign Affairs said that another event of this kind may have disastrous consequences, the PM said that it was a combined failure of the worlds agencies that they did not find Osama earlier and the Army Chief said that a similar foray will lead to the review of relations. Feeble excuses and attempts to deflect blame will not help anyone, least of all, us. None of the mentioned responses take away the embarrassment and the ridicule that has been heaped on us or restores our credibility. Those at the helm of affairs should act wisely. A clear line of thinking is needed as we cannot be led up the garden path again. Nothing short of a whole paradigm shift in the way we have run our affairs up to now. Postscript: On the crucial day when Washington had planned this stealthy operation to whisk away Osama, dead or alive, the Presidency had its own, and I quote former Foreign Secretary Riaz Khokhar, 'Lucy Irani Circus going on inside, with ministerial oaths being submitted to the new partners in power, the PML-Q. Both sides make the strangest bedfellows, in the light of the accusations they have made against each other in the recent past. I think principled position is a tree that simply refuses to grow in Pakistan. The new ministers have not been able to bask in the glory of the newly acquired power and perks (proverbial justice), even for a single day because Abbottabad completely overshadowed them. It has embarrassed some of the Q members, like Marvi Memon and Tariq Azim, who have chosen not to mix with the new arrangement. On the other side, it has embarrassed Raza Rabbani, who has opted to resign his Ministry but people like them are few and far between. Just as the OBL story exposed so many holes in our aspirations to strategic depths, the new power-sharing story exposes personal gains over moral high ground and short-term victories over long-term reputations. The only one looking cleverer, shrewder and smarter than all the others in the current political scenario is, undoubtedly, President Asif Ali Zardari - although even he was sleeping when the US helicopters came sweeping down n The writer is a freelance columnist. Email: tallatazim@yahoo.com