The USA, not satisfied with the success of the raid on Abbottabad and the consequent killing of Osama bin Laden, has given India a slap on the wrist, just to show them who is boss in the region, by denying them the right to launch a similar raid on Pakistan to capture any of the perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks on its soil. Little does the USA realize that its claim of special status within the world community, of its right to undertake raids on another country, supposedly an ally, in pursuit of an individual it is seeking, are undermined by the very arguments it uses to reject the Indian claim, which is caused by the raid. This is merely an example of how India is attempting to use its burgeoning alliance with the USA against Pakistan in the War on Terror, which resembles more the kind of war on Islam that India is already practicing in Kashmir than any combat against real terrorists. The slap on the wrist was delivered by the spokesman of the US State Department, a sufficiently low level to satisfy India if it complained, but a sufficient level to satisfy Pakistan when it asked about the US reaction to the statement by the Indian Army chief who said that such a raid by India was possible. The USA has already found that its involvement in the area is not yielding the requisite results, and that its invasion of Afghanistan, which was its first direct invasion of a Muslim land, is proving an entanglement very difficult to get out of. It is being defeated there, the first Islamic country where it did not depend on a surrogate to invade and occupy, as it has done in Palestine and Kashmir, where it has relied on the Zionist entity and India respectively. The American need for a safe exit for its forces must be balanced with its need to tell the rest of the world it is still powerful. Therefore, it must show itself as the ultimate arbiter in every region, even those where it has more or less tapped a local power on the shoulder to act as its regional surrogate, a role it has assigned to India in the region, where it is supposed to act as a counterweight to China. Therefore, while the USA has been allowed, by its egregious violation of Pakistani sovereignty, to show how it can trample all over the region. Indias reaction, while apparently aimed at Pakistan, is also a way of telling the USA that it must stay out of the region, and leave matters here to India. The USA should learn from the whole episode that India, despite its size and consequent attractions as a market, is unreliable as an ally. The USA must realize that if it chooses not to respect the sovereignty of other states, its favourites will also carry out similar violations, and probably using equipment it has itself supplied. This is the dilemma it is now facing with India, which has made clear that if it leaves Pakistan alone, it will be because it thinks Pakistan too hot a potato to handle, not because of the USA.