Credibility trumps truth

Pakistan is also haunted by the accusations made by India with regard to the origin of the one terrorist caught in Mumbai. The question is not whether the Indians are right or wrong. What is important, in real terms, is whether the world believes India or Pakistan. -- editorial in The Daily Times

It doesn't matter whether Pakistan harbors terrorists or not. All that matters is whether the world believes so. The impact on Pakistani society and politics of having active terrorist groups in their midst is unimportant if the world is not paying attention.

From further down in the editorial:

The army has removed a Lashkar-e-Tayba training camp in Azad Kashmir, on the outskirts of Muzaffarabad. ...Accusations were flying thick about this camp for a long time. Informed Pakistanis knew that the camp was there, although camouflaged somewhat by the stratagem of allowing the outfit to take the role of a rescuer of people after the 2005 earthquake in Azad Kashmir, despite some “problems” that the outfit had with “foreign” NGOs working there and their female members.

The above examples are typical of the thinking of the Pakistan RAPE class. (The folks on the bharat-rakshak forum come up with wicked acronyms: RAPE stands for Rich Anglophone Pakistani Elite). To the RAPE, reality consists primarily of public relations. What is more important to them is that Pakistani spokesmen had plausible deniability of the existence of the LeT traning camp. The complaint is that by removing the camp, the Pakistani army has implicitly admitted the camp is there, and that undermines Pakistani credibility.

The world may know you are lying, but as long as the world is too polite to point it out, everything is hunky-dory. That Pakistan may have a tiger by the tail is not to be thought about.