The top US leadership has shown its disingenuity by calling on Pakistan to remove the anti-American sentiment presently so strong among its population. At the monthly meeting of the US National Security Council to discuss the future of the region, particularly on the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, that will be the primary US focus now that Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden has been killed. It should be noted that this meeting coincided with Pakistani Prime Minister Gilani saying that the will of the people would be given due importance. The USA showed no sign of realisation that its own policies had caused the Pakistani people to oppose it. We will not go into the effect of the USA being a superpower, or rather the sole superpower in a unipolar world. The anti-American sentiment is the result of the USA supporting illegal occupations of Muslim lands, shown by its uncritical backing of the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the Indians of Kashmir. While it has always backed Israel, it grew closer to India as it ended its relationship with Russia after the collapse of the USSR marked the end of the Cold War. As if these were not enough, the USA decided to get into the business of occupying Muslim lands itself, and now has forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan, from both of which it removed the governments forcibly after invading them. Under such circumstances, its fresh demand that Pakistanis actually like them for all that the USA has done over the decades, and about which it is not at all sorry and which it continues to do, can only be met by something akin to what Mr Gilani told a US Congressional delegation when it called on him in Islamabad. It is now for the USA to realise that this is not him trying to be funny, but a sober evaluation by someone the USA should realise is a friend. If the USA wishes to be friends with the Pakistani people, it must do so on the basis of justice and following policies they do not condemn. Any unrealistic assumptions about the ability of Pakistani leaders to influence public opinion in directions that contradict what is plainly visible will be defeated. The USA should realise that its policy of installing puppets will not succeed to the extent of making the peoples of other countries become choruses of approval, and it cannot make public opinion change without a change of policy, not just over its own illegal occupations of Muslim lands, but also the backing it extends to others occupations. It must realise that Pakistanis, being Muslims, cannot ignore the tribulations of other Muslims.