Sir, interesting post, but I have a different take on the matter.
First, do not listen to Hamid "Donkey flowers" Gul. He is delusional like the rest of the Pakis who think they're the center of the Islamic world, like they have some destiny to fulfill. They're the stray dogs of the Islamic world, to be used and discarded by the true inheritors of Islam, which are, always have been, and always will be the Arabs. He's another mentally defective megalomaniac, full of bravado and low, manipulative cunning - Pakistan has produced tons of those.
I remember a story someone recounted about Shivaji's encounter with Afzal Khan. It goes like this:
At the start of the meeting Afzal Khan graciously embraced Shivaji as per custom. According to the Maratha chronicles, he then suddenly tightened his clasp, gripped Shivaji's neck in his left arm and struck him with a kitar. Shivaji was saved by his armor, recovered and counter-attacked Afzal Khan with wagh nakh, disemboweling him. He then stabbed Khan with his bichawa, and ran out of the tent towards his men.
Afzal Khan cried out and Sayyid Banda rushed to the scene and attacked Shivaji with his patta, cutting his turban. Shivaji's bodyguard Jiva Mahala intervened, chopping off Sayyid Banda' s right arm in a quick combat before killing him.
Apparently, as the story goes, Banda was a skilled warrior, and Shivaji knew that his men had little chance against him. Therefore, for months on end before the fateful day, Mahala was told to practice one thing and one thing only - a stroke of the sword that was meant to dismember the opponent. The idea was that if he mastered that ONE thing, it was enough to disable the adversary, and all other battle skills made no difference.
In our post-independence strategic scenario, Pakistan has been a bit like that - its entire and sole strategic purpose has been to harm India in any way possible. All of its military, political and economic weight has been applied towards that one single aim - to disable India, slow it down, wear it down with the war of a thousand cuts. They're under-developed and have frankly given up on all other aspects of the country - economic, technological, social, civilizational, etc. Its entire identity rests on the promise of India's ruin.
India is different - it had a self-proclaimed "Pandit" as its leader, a living, breathing turd called Nehru for whom national interest was the very last thing under consideration. India has been shooting itself in foot against an opponent that is united to undermine it. A rabid, murderous dog against a sleeping tiger is no contest at all.
You think the Americans have not won in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan (let's leave Vietnam aside). But I argue that they have. The entire plan is in fact DESTABILIZATION, that is in fact the victory condition, and not a stable democratic government which makes people happy. You think the US army could not have taken care of a bunch of rag-tag amateurs like ISIS? You think they didn't know ISIS was selling oil to Turkey? The US has bombed the living hell out of far more populated countries - ISIS was ALLOWED to survive, and if not for Russia helping Assad, it would still have survived.
The US has been successful in 90% of its attempts to subjugate nation-states: you hear so much about places like Vietnam and Syria because these are the rare exceptions. All of South America is subjugated, the USSR broke up, Japan is a client state, Europe is a sidekick, Eastern Europe has switched sides for the most part - other than Russia, China, Iran and to some extent India, the US pretty much has a free hand to do what it wants in any part of the world.
The endgame for the US: all of Afghanistan under a pliant regime in Kabul.
The endgame for Pakistan: Afghanistan in chaos - an easy recruitment ground for Taliban to send to India.
The endgame for India: A stable Afghanistan and Pakistan in four pieces.
The scenarios between the US and India for Afghanistan fully converge, whereas they do not for Pakistan. It therefore is doing everything in its power to hurt Afghanistan: its very existence depends on an unstable, divided Afghanistan. It is manipulating the Pashtuns using religion to do its bidding - it's very hard to put an end to that sort of pervasive, distributed nuisance.
If the US really wants to get serious, it can stop all Porki generals and politicians from travelling to the US, confiscate their property, freeze their accounts, make their children studying in various parts of the US and Europe "disappear" - they can really light a fire in Porki butts. To what extent they'll go remains to be seen - it'll be a function of how much they value Porkistan as a geopolitical asset. My guess is that all this over the past week has just been transactional pressure to get Porkis to give up certain assets, not change its policy. If they really wanted to squeeze Pakistan, the country would be in four pieces.
