Dear Musharraf, please murder your darlings

General Musharraf (or is it Retd Gen, or ex-President?),

I share with you this moment of grief that Pakistan is witnessing. Those 132 children shall be remembered forever.

However, even as you grieve, there is no need for you to shoot off your mouth and blame India for the dastardly attack. The truth is that for a nation desensitised to violence and the bloodletting that the terrorists in your country are indulging in, you and your previous governments are to blame for it.

You yourself were the president of Pakistan for almost seven years (2001-08). Did you not know what was happening in your country? Did you do anything to rid the country of the terror camps and the hate mongers?

Every time you blame India for something that happens in your country you sound like a broken record that's stuck at "India did it".

If anything you need to look within and realise that the inhumanity that was meted out to the students and their teachers was at the hands of your own men, men who your army and your secret service, ISI, had raised, taught, trained and armed and sent out.

The truth of the matter is that you cannot ignore and cannot deny that Pakistan has become a breeding ground for terrorists. The attack on the children should be a wake-up call for you and your nation. And if not, ask yourself, does Pakistan then deserve to call itself a nation?

Instead of actually going after terrorists, when you make such statements, you weaken your own country’s resolve to fight that very monster that you have kept as a pet and which is now ravaging the little children of your country.

Sir, it is high time you realised that Pakistan is infected by a disease so dangerous and so deep-rooted that it has made its inroads into the power corridors of your government. That same virus breeds on your ineptness to see and understand the truth that Pakistan and its actions are themselves responsible for what happened at the Army Public School in Peshawar. India had nothing to do with it.

Your reluctance in blaming the cowardly terrorists who carried out the attack and shifting the blame elsewhere is disgusting and only shows that the disease of terrorism has crippled your government.

I do not need to remind you that the name of your country "Pakistan" means "pious land" or "pure land". Do you think that by allowing terrorists to have a free run of your country you are doing justice to that name?

Right now the people of your country want only one thing: vengeance.

But that isn't all. Vengeance won't finish the job. A speech here, a promise there won't help. You need to cut the funding of the monsters that you have grown in your own backyard. You need to review what is being taught in the madrassas, you need to bring such purveyors of hate mongering madcaps as the 26/11 Mumbai attacks mastermind Hafiz Saeed to justice and most of all you need to be ruthless when crushing the militant groups in your country. You need to cleanse your own political establishment.

After all, how many children, or state leaders will you lose to such hatred?

For three long decades your people have suffered the brunt of this monster. At home they are killed by the Taliban, when they step out of their homes and go abroad, they are labelled the Taliban. Is that what you want to give to your countrymen? Would you much rather have your countrymen be seen as terrorists rather than people who come from a pious land?

Accept the monster that you have created and finish that monster once and for all.

~ An Indian who is grieving for the 132 dead children and the teachers