With friends like this let's be thankful America doesn't have enemies

Dilip Hiro has a depressing article on the Al Jazeera site today.

Hiro isn't some anti-US raver and he knows his stuff. What he sees when he looks at Pakistan-US relations doesn't exactly fill the reader with hope.

America spends billions trying to buy friends in Pakistan's security establishment. Why?

In the first place, America needs Pakistan's cooperation for the Afghan war. In fact, it needs Pakistan's cooperation just to get out!

As the brief suspension of that cooperation for a few months last winter demonstrated, logistics become far more complicated and expensive when the US is forced to rely on even more unsavory neighbor states for access to the country.

Secondly, the pointy heads in the Pentagon are scared silly by Pakistan's nuclear program. The Paks aren't years away or months away from nuclear weapons.

They've got them.

Genuine viable nukes and the missiles to deliver them anywhere anytime.

According to Hiro the US military has an ongoing commando training program that will go into Pakistan and get those nukes just like they got bin Laden. That's a lovely fantasy but I'm guessing that they guard their nuclear arsenal a little better than they were protecting bin Laden. This plan is a non-starter.

By the end of Hiro's article you realize that the Americans have painted themselves into quite the corner. On the one hand bankrupt America keeps trying to buy friends there. On the other they run roughshod over Pakistan's sovereignty with the widely hated drone campaign.

There are at least two broad lessons to take away from this mess.

When one sees the deference with which the Pakistani security establishment is treated, it's not hard to see why other countries in the neighborhood might want to have nuclear weapons. It's a game changer. You go from being a nobody to being somebody who can wheedle billions in extortion money out of Uncle Sam.

The other lesson is for the American leadership.

How many lives and how much money would be saved if America could stay home and look after America?