Mishandling by the dominant post-imperial powers (?driven in part by individual official's guilty conscience about having supported multiple evil proxies of their own? I am always curious if such psychodynamics plays any significant role in world affairs? or is it just grist for novelist's mills and can be ignored? I am never sure..) has allowed this threat to grow. I know colonel Roberts and many others will disagree, but I think some critical skill sets and organizations nurtured by the Pakistani state COULD have been shut down or pushed into small-scale criminality if the international community had been clear about its own objectives. That chance may now be lost.
In short, I continue to push the theory that ruinous expensive countermeasures are not the only option. The weak spot on the terrorist side was the state apparatus, not the clandestine networks themselves. By focusing on street level criminals, the operation as a whole was allowed to get away in what may have been a limited "window of opportunity".
I continue to believe that the PEOPLE of Pakistan would have been much better off it the STATE of Pakistan had faced some more pressure on this account. I genuinely believe that my obsessive carping about this issue is driven by a sincere desire to see the people of Pakistan and the Indian subcontinent leave stupid zero-sum games behind and grab a chance to transform living standards for one fourth of the world. But even I can see that I probably come across as some kind of pakiphobic monomaniac. I do try to step back and re-examine my assumptions. Maybe not hard enough?
It seems genuinely hard to know our own motives.