EDITOR’S NOTE: Due to a systems glitch (the correct byline WAS put in) this went under the wrong byline (of someone not even a writer on TMV). It has now been corrected. We regret the system error.

Lawrence Wright suggests that maybe our relationship with Pakistan was a screw-up from the start.

It’s the end of the Second World War, and the United States is deciding what to do about two immense, poor, densely populated countries in Asia. America chooses one of the countries, becoming its benefactor. Over the decades, it pours billions of dollars into that country’s economy, training and equipping its military and its intelligence services. The stated goal is to create a reliable ally with strong institutions and a modern, vigorous democracy. The other country, meanwhile, is spurned because it forges alliances with America’s enemies.

The country not chosen was India, which “tilted” toward the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Pakistan became America’s protégé, firmly supporting its fight to contain Communism. The benefits that Pakistan accrued from this relationship were quickly apparent: in the nineteen-sixties, its economy was an exemplar. India, by contrast, was a byword for basket case. Fifty years then went by. What was the result of this social experiment?

India has become the state that we tried to create in Pakistan.

The US created an enemy in the Soviet Union and spent trillions on developing a hugely obese defense establishment that now, virtually, owns the US. Pakistan, in turn, spends a lot of our money on arming itself against its own favorite enemy: India. Where does that leave the US-Pakistan relationship? What about those billions we send to our “ally”?

After the September 11th attacks, Pakistan abruptly became America’s key ally in the “war on terror.” Under President George W. Bush, the U.S. gave billions of dollars to Pakistan, most of it in unrestricted funds, to combat terrorism. Pervez Musharraf, who served as President between 1999 and 2008, now admits that during his tenure he diverted many of those billions to arm Pakistan against its hobgoblin enemy, India. “Whoever wishes to be angry, let them be angry—why should we bother?” Musharraf said in an interview on the Pakistani television channel Express News. “We have to maintain our security.” Since Musharraf left office, there has been little indication that U.S. aid—$4.5 billion in 2010, one of the largest amounts ever given to a foreign country—is being more properly spent.

The main beneficiary of U.S. money, the Pakistani military, has never won a war, but, according to “Military Inc.,” by Ayesha Siddiqa, it has done very well in its investments: hotels, real estate, shopping malls. Such entrepreneurship, however corrupt, fills a gap, as Pakistan’s economy is now almost entirely dependent on American taxpayers.

Funny how that happens. In at least two major Middle Eastern and Central Asian powers — Iran and Pakistan — the military have built their own overbearing corporate and political power. In Pakistan, at least, that power came (and continues to come) from American taxpayers even as we suffer economically from our own bloated military, the “military-industrial complex” that governs America.

Go figure. We debate about “permanent war.” When are we going to debate “permanent stupidity”?

Cross posted from the blog Prairie Weather.