By Ahsan Butt

After Barack Obama’s very-much-meh speech on the Middle East last week — where we apparently learned that the worst thing about the Israeli occupation is the “humiliation” Palestinians suffer — I tweeted that the four issues American politicians can’t be mildly critical of are guns, the military, Saudi Arabia and Israel.

Originally published by Asian Correspondent

On Facebook, a bunch of people responded to my request for additions to this list, and the ones I agreed with were things like agriculture subsidies, any famous President before the 20th century, God/Church, and Medicare/Social Security. For a variety of reasons (but mostly interest group politics), you cannot, in America, really question established narratives on these topics and still be considered viable.

That got me thinking: what would the equivalent list for Pakistan look like? Remember, the criterion is basically that even non-mainstream people stay away from these topics for fear of eliciting mainstream reaction. Here’s my list, please add to it and debate in the comments.

1. Religion/Allah

This one’s so obvious there’s no point explaining it.

2. China

I once wrote a post explaining that everything mainstream Pakistan accuses the U.S. of doing — being unreliable, using it to further its interests in the region, not caring about the Pakistani people, backing dictators and so on — is also done by China. And yet we never hear a meep against our patrons to the north east. Obviously India has a lot to do with that, as does our military’s chokehold on the national security discourse. But isn’t it interesting that basically no one challenges China’s esteemed position within the collective mind of our body politic?

3. Saudi Arabia

Sort of a cross between one and two. All those beards and all that madrassah money make it difficult to criticize for Allah-reasons; all that oil makes it difficult to criticize for strategic reasons; and all that “patron saint of Sunni Islam in the 20th century” thing makes it difficult to criticize for ideological reasons. Add it all up and you have a state basically immune from questioning.

4. Nuclear weapons

Not only can you not criticize the decision to develop nuclear weapons (which is sort of understandable). But you can’t even question the decision to test nuclear weapons as a signal to the rest of the world (much less understandable). The 1998 tests, in my view, remain one of the turning points of our country’s political history. Not for what happened but for what didn’t happen.

To turn the clock back a second, our nuclear program — though ostensibly born under Bhutto — really accelerated in the 1980s when the world looked away because we were so important in the fight against the Soviets. India had exploded its first set of atomic devices in the early 1970s. In May 1998 they did so again. They were almost universally condemned for doing this by the international community. I know it stretches the imagination for Pakistanis at this time, but we weren’t hated as much back then and India wasn’t as loved back then. And there was a two-week window in which they were hated more than us because they had tested and we hadn’t.

So my point is, in a strategic sense, we could’ve capitalized on that quite easily. The world would’ve given us lots and lots of money to not test. We could’ve become the “good guy” in South Asia — again, I know, it stretches the imagination — by not testing. Most importantly, we would have still had the actual weapons. You don’t have to announce to the world that you have these things to maintain deterrence — just ask Israel, which has never publicly acknowledged its nuclear arsenal.

To recap: we would’ve had the money, the “better half” reputation, isolated India diplomatically, and still maintained deterrence. Of course, our gung ho khakis (and Nawaz Sharif, who to this day takes credit for this decision even though it wasn’t really his) decided they could not wait and that it would be too much of an insult to our honor to not test. And the rest is history.

5. Ahmedis

You can stand up for Christians, Shias, Balochis or really any other minority out there, but you cannot under any circumstance stand up for the Ahmedis. It just cannot happen.

Missed the cut: Balochistan (plenty of leftists/nationalists in Balochistan/KP have said quite a bit about this), the 1971 war (even Imran Khan said we should apologize, come on), partition (remember Altaf Hussain’s line on it?), and the ISI (too many instances to count, and that’s just in the last week).