Journalist Christopher Hitchens has never been one to let good journalism come in the way of a great turn of phrase. Hislatest piece in Slate is no exception.

“Why do the Pakistanis hate us?” he asks, then proceeds to list everything the US has done for the country. The examples he gives are telling:

The United States made Pakistan a top-priority Cold War ally. It overlooked the regular interventions of its military into politics. It paid a lot of bills and didn’t ask too many questions….During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, Washington fed the Pakistani military and intelligence services from an overflowing teat and allowed them to acquire nuclear weapons on the side.

Hitchens doesn’t consider that this may be the problem. The US has either turned a blind eye to or actively supported every one of Pakistan’s three military coups. It has thrown tons of money at successive governments with no accountability, fostering a ruling elite that is among the most entitled and corrupt in the world. And all Pakistan got from the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan was over a million refugees, a military establishment that cannot be dislodged and easy access to heroin and Kalashnikovs.

But after asking why the Pakistanis hate the US, Hitchens forgets about the 150 million citizens of the country and decides to psychoanalyse the elite.

This, then, is why the Pakistani elite hates the United States. It hates it because it is dependent on it and is still being bought by it. It is a dislike that is also a form of self-hatred of the sort that often develops between client states and their paymasters.

What spurred this armchair psychiatry is the news that the Pakistan army isn’t interested in taking on the Afghan Taliban. It seems obvious to Hitchens that the only reason this isn’t happening is because the military is filled with self-hatred. He doesn’t bother to analyse the argument that Pakistan sees the Afghan Taliban as an asset that can be used to the country’s benefit later on. Instead, its just “overcompensation for their abject status as recipients of the American dole…”

Hitchens also shows a stunning disregard for the daily reality of life in Pakistan when he says, “the Pakistanis don’t even pretend that their main military thrust is directed against the common foe..” Pakistan may have kept the majority of its army on the border with India, but it has also directed two major, and by all accounts, successful operations this year. To imply that the army is not even pretending to fight the Taliban is ridiculous. We may not have taken on assorted Afghan Taliban because we don’t think it’s in our national interest (a view I don’t agree with, but one that the military establishment clearly holds), but we’ve done everything we could to fight the Pakistani Taliban and suffer the consequences through daily terrorist attacks.

It also appears that Hitchens has forgotten, or chosen to ignore, that Pakistan has never shown any interest in fighting the Afghan Taliban. Why else would he attribute our reluctance to Obama’s decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan in 2011? If we were only refusing to fight the Taliban because the US was going to leave Afghanistan, why didn’t we fight them back when it seemed like the US would be around indefinitely? Or could it be that Hitchens opposes any withdrawal date and will say anything to discredit it, no matter what the facts?

Without any mention of drone attacks and US arrogance, Hitchens comes to the conclusion that the US should stop all aid to Pakistan and get closer to India. Because the only thing that will change our opinion of the US is being isolated from them.