What I Would Like To Hear From The Next U.S. President [Concering Pakistan]

Hopefully, it's Obama. Anyway, these measures, in my humble opinion, will benefit both the U.S. and Pakistan.

On Talking And Dealing With The People
We want a relationship with the people of Pakistan, not just its political and military leaders. While we love our late-night conversations with politicians and Presidents, and we love our monthly briefings and frank exchanges of view with the senior military command, we want to open a third front, so to speak. We want to be engaged with the people on the ground. As such, we are taking this opportunity to announce 500 scholarships to U.S. colleges and universities for the best and the brightest of Pakistani students, particularly in science, technology and business. We are also going to abolish any quotas and tariffs on Pakistani textile products. Finally, we are tying military and economic aid to spending targets on health and education in the Pakistan budget - the way the E.U. dictates terms to countries wishing to become members. This will ensure that even when we wield the stick, it is to Pakistani citizens' benefit.

On Afghanistan, The "War On Terror" And Foreign Policy
Read my lips - we will not conduct unilateral military operations in Pakistan. We will continue to share intelligence, and continue to act in consort with our allies. We trust to them to do the best job they can under very trying circumstances and, given our experience in Vietnam and Iraq, understand that defeating guerrilla-type militants isn't exactly easy, least of all in terrain and weather significantly more challenging than either of those theaters of war. To disabuse the notion that elements within the ISI and the Army hold that we will abandon Pakistan the way we did after the Soviet-Afghan war - which is the real reason some are still less than fully committed to fighting the Taliban - we will announce a [largely symbolic] 25-year friendship treaty [that hopefully goes better than other such treaties]. Finally we will lean on our new best friend in the region - India - to make a lasting settlement on Kashmir, which will show our allies in Pakistan that we haven't forgotten about the things that really piss them off.

On Pakistani Domestic Politics And Terrorism
We promise to not buy into Washington lobbyists' bullshit. We will support parties and not personalities; institutions and not kleptocrats. More importantly, while we retain the right - as a massive donor of aid to Pakistan - to politely nudge various actors in different directions [as we did with Musharraf, who wouldn't have shed his uniform and agreed to elections unless we forced him to], we will cease to meddle in the political process, not for any normative reasons, but simply because it doesn't work and is patently counterproductive. We will - gasp! - encourage religious parties like the JI and, especially, the JUI to use their considerable influence with the Taliban to stop doing the crap they're doing. Even though we are perfectly cognizant of the fact that we don't enjoy a particularly sound reputation with those folks, it's worth a shot, especially with the sly-and-always-willing-to-compromise Fazlur Rehman. We understand perfectly well that to defeat militancy within Pakistan's borders, the nation's political stakeholders - political parties, civil society, the common man - have to unite. We will encourage such unity and not accentuate divisions within the polity.

On Expansion Of The NBA
We will encourage David Stern to install a franchise in Karachi, preferably called the Karachi Ahsans. Allen Iverson will be instructed to play for them immediately.