LAST Sunday, my son and I went to the Windsor Castle Royal Military Tattoo, bringing to a close the Royal Horse Show.

It brought back memories of our own now defunct Horse and Cattle Show which used to be held at the Fortress Stadium in Lahore and which in addition to showing highly prized livestock also featured a Military Tattoo.

It was a moving experience for an old soldier, hearing the massed bands playing marching tunes one knew as a young lad.

The faultless drill was a sight to behold; there was not a note out of tune.

The Windsor Tattoo brought into clear focus like nothing else, the extent of the slide our country has experienced over the years. We had it all too: if the Royal Horse Artillery thrilled us at Windsor with their precision and intricate rides towing those heavy guns behind teams of eight handsome black horses, we too had eight elegant riders competing at tent-pegging and riding eight beautiful white stallions at the gallop, their pagris flying jauntily behind them, lances flashing in the light.

Indeed, our massed bands display was spectacular too: with four times the number of bandsmen than at the Windsor tattoo, dressed in regimental tartan mixed with colourful pagris, the band-majors marching with élan, alternately twirling and throwing their staffs with flair high up into the air and catching them faultlessly as those heavy and impossibly long objects hurtled downwards.I might add that whilst our guest of honour, the president, used to enter the arena mostly behind time and riding in a state horse-drawn carriage and was received by a phalanx of bowing and kowtowing officials and flunkeys, Prince Edward came to the tattoo exactly on the dot, in a lone Range Rover, and was taken to his seat quietly and without fuss. I particularly noted that every time he rose to take the salute, he executed perfect drill movements: hand and forearm in a perfect line, wrist absolutely straight; longest way up, shortest down.

But wait; what am I going on about? Military tattoos? Horse and Cattle Shows? How to salute correctly? Seeing the mess our country is in with terrorism, what am I going on about? The latest news to come from home is that a naval aviation base in Karachi has been attacked and that a number of security personnel have been killed and two of our three PC-3 Orion aircraft destroyed by the terrorists resulting in the loss of tens of millions of dollars. Who else but the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan has claimed responsibility!

When will our Deep State wake up to the reality that stares Pakistan in the face, and understand that there are no good Taliban: that Pakistani, Afghan, Chechen, Uzbek, Arab, Uighur, whatever, they are all born of the same grandmother? When will it give up its support of what it considers the ‘good’ Taliban, its strategic assets? When will it declare open war against all terrorists? How many more hits will it take against its own armed forces to realise that all so-called Taliban are very bad news indeed, that that one is as poisonous as the next.When will our great strategic thinkers finally understand that it is no good just dissembling to the so-called ghairatmand part of our media, that loud and raucous lot, and feed it contrived and made-up stories against others, particularly the elected government which has as much to do with how this poor country’s security and foreign policy is run as my cook Boota? When will it realise that everybody and Charlie’s aunt is aware of what actually is going on in Pakistan, who calls the shots, and where the actual problem lies.

President Obama’s latest pronouncement on how the United States intends to deal with Pakistan is a result of this awareness.

Raising the possibility of again authorising a raid inside Pakistan if any Al Qaeda or Taliban target was found there, the US president said: “We are very respectful of the sovereignty of Pakistan, but we cannot allow someone who is actually planning to kill our people or our allies’ people … without us taking some action … our job is to secure the United States.”

He also said he hoped the raid on Abbottabad “would be a wake-up call, where we start seeing a more effective cooperative relationship”. When will you wake up, we must ask the senior commanders of our establishment?

When will they realise that the whole world stands against us in the matter of terrorism, and that despite the fact that theymight consider themselves as the best thing to have happened to the world, this country simply cannot stand against the world. I have said repeatedly that we must clean up our act, we must change tack now otherwise we are in very serious trouble.

Which reminds me. As details about the Abbottabad raid appear on the Internet, we find that there were at least 18 American air force planes in the night sky including command aircraft, fighter-bombers, C-130 gun ships, fuel tankers etcetera.

Now then, while we whinge and wail that the Americans didn’t tell us about the impending raid, and hide behind ‘intelligence failure’, what in God’s name would our tin-hats of the army, navy and air force have done if they knew exactly when the Americans would make the raid? Let us be honest for once, for heaven’s sake.

I have always held that we are an indolent and a lazy people who scarcely make any inquiry into matters that should concern us very deeply — for example, knowing our interlocutors well. How many people in the ISI knew that Leon Panetta, the CIA chief, was bringing to his job the long experience of a seasoned elected politician and of a chief of staff to a US president?

How many people in positions of authority followed the brilliant political career of the extremely clever President Obama?

Had they known, they would have realised that there was no fooling these two.

kshafi1@yahoo.com.pk