Taliban attack: Why I don't stand with Pakistan

India with Pakistan. I don't get it. The infectious impulse on Twitter projecting itself as a post-Peshawar counter-punch to people's instinctive hatred and distancing from Pakistan. Pakistan, that "failed state", that "creator of monsters", that misguided breeder of venomous reptiles that forgot that reptiles see all prey as equal. That maelstrom of bitter clichés that get stirred up every time blood spilt in that country. I don't get it. What precisely are we standing with? Or who? This isn't a loaded, bitter question. I'm honestly asking who we're standing with if we're standing with Pakistan.

If we must stand with Pakistan. I can speak for myself, so here's who I stand with: above all, the children and school staff who were murdered in Peshawar. The parents of every child who perished. Every Pakistani who weeps for what her or his nation has become but isn't strong enough to change it yet. Every officer in the government or Army, every journalist who has even the most fleeting sense that this toxic, self-perpetuating horror that the Pakistani state has created over decades needs not only to be reined in, but destroyed without a trace to give Pakistan's young a clean break for the future. Every Pakistani who mourns Indians killed by Pakistani terrorists. That's the Pakistan I stand with. The problem is, I don't believe that's Pakistan at all. Not even close.

But then standing with Pakistan at this time should be unconditional, unqualified, right? This isn't the time to say we're a bigger, better nation. This is plainly the time to stand with Pakistan in its moment of grief, of horror. I ask again: which Pakistan are we standing with? Are those who "stand with Pakistan" standing with the Pakistan army? Or the ISI? Or Nawaz Sharif? The Bhuttos? President Musharraf? Just the people, they tell you. The Taliban is Pakistani too, but then of course they're not part of who we're standing with, even if beloved-of-India Imran Khan finds breathtaking complexity in their villainy.

I've been told I won't ever get it because I don't want to - that the deaths of so many children make all these specifics momentarily irrelevant. Even speaking in such terms, I'm told, makes me heartless, a jerk who can't let a good, positive, clean impulse play out. That right there is the defensive, touchy, self-serving nature of unquestioning sentimentalism. It hates questions. It's a message, they tell you. Yes, a message to whom? To Pakistan. Which Pakistan? The Pakistan that is in grief today. Which Pakistan is in grief today? All of it, because its children have been killed. So we're standing with the Pakistanis who killed the children too, the Pakistanis who created the killers, and those who perhaps even celebrate this horror? Who would celebrate such horror? You think this is the first time the Taliban has attacked schools? No, but this is the worst attack ever. Sure, but I'm guessing this isn't the right time to bring up history, hypocrisy, institutional sponsorship and then selective appeasement of terror. And our own selective response to it. The problem with calling out the conveniently imprecise bullshit of hashtag sentimentalism is that it immediately means you're a bigot, prejudiced or a plain racist. Worse, and this is practically my second name on Twitter, a war-monger. But, like with hashtag sentimentalism, all that really does is put a lid on questions you don't want to face?

If we're going to stand with Pakistan, let's be clear what we're setting aside: the fact that Pakistan continues to sponsor, handle and execute terror attacks on Indian soil. That India is a direct target of the group that claims responsibility for the Peshawar attack. We're setting aside every victim - including hundreds of Indian children - of Pakistan-sponsored terror. That the Taliban is a creation of the Pakistani state. That deadly games within the Pakistani establishment that still see, for want of a better phrase, Pakistan running with the hares and hunting with the hounds. We're setting aside every bit of evidence we have ever supplied to Pakistan that implicates the state and the army that shows them responsible or complicit in the spilling of Indian blood. The question I get is why the bloody bean-count? This isn't the time to compare. This is the time to share grief. This isn't the time to ask questions. Don't use the deaths of children to make a supposedly bigger point. To use a national horror for a historic adversary to shoot holes in the brilliant fabric of holy-grail unity. Specifics are inconvenient. Objectivity is a bitch. Shut that shit away, nobody wants to hear it. Not the right time to ask why the horror of Peshawar should stoke sympathy for anyone except those who bled, and those who want to change Pakistan. Not the right time to say that speaking of being with Pakistan is to squander valuable sentimentalism and open-spiritedness on something we aren't remotely clear or sure about.

Talk is cheap. The lives of school children too.