US Defence Secretary Leon Panettas words, We cannot resolve issues of Afghanistan without solving the issues of Pakistan uttered at an address on Tuesday, exude a sense of unmixed deceit and insincerity that would raise perceptive readers eyebrows for the brazen lie they contain. May one ask Mr Panetta that if that is what the United States has been feeling, which of Pakistans issues has it helped resolve since at least 9/11? Are we anywhere nearer the end of Kashmir dispute with India? Has Washingtons chosen friend to serve as a bulwark against the ineluctable rise of China as a power of unrivalled strength that it dreads would end its overlordship of the world, given up the idea of turning Pakistan into a desert and stopped usurping its share of water guaranteed under the Indus Waters Treaty? On the contrary On the one hand, its mollycoddling of New Delhi has made it ever more defiant of international law and agreement to the detriment of Islamabad. On the other, under its pressure, Pakistans weak and self-serving leaders the US has foisted upon this nation are doing their best to frustrate the Kashmiris struggle for freedom from the Indian stranglehold. Turning a blind eye to the atrocities the occupation forces are committing on them, our leaders are showing increasing readiness to ignore the existence of this core dispute and develop relations with New Delhi through unwarranted trade concessions. And India feels further emboldened to disregard its commitments on waters emanating from Held Kashmir. There are a host of other questions to ask Mr Panetta, besides the above two. Has he studied the history of Pak-US relations enough to know that Pakistan joined SEATO and CENTO to protect the US strategic interests in the region and to the great anger of the other superpower of the time? Can he recall the proxy war Pakistan fought to throw out the Russians from Afghanistan that led to the disintegration of the Soviet Union? Has he forgotten our role in serving as a bridge between his country and China? The ungrateful US repaid us by forcing France to renege on its commitment to supply us the reprocessing plant, clamped a unique kind of sanctions on us and has now started befriending India that had been its adversarys close associate, even sacrificing the interests of its key ally in the war on terror. And if both Mr Panetta and Ms Clinton keep harping on the theme of our inaction or hobnobbing with the Haqqanis, how come are they, in the same breath, advocating US-Haqqanis dialogue? Somehow, in the face of a shameful defeat the US has suffered at the hands of Afghan resistance, rational approach to issues has deserted its policymakers. While they want us to launch an armed action against the Haqqani group, which has not done us any harm, at the same time they negotiate with the same group even though they accuse it of killing their and their allies soldiers. It is about time the hawkish policymakers in Washington, like Mr Panetta and Ms Clinton, accepted the reality on the ground.