India was brought to a gut-wrenching standstill last week. On Wednesday, 10 Islamic terrorists armed with guns, grenades, explosives, and a lot of determination went on a 59-hour rampage through Mumbai’s bustling financial district.

We still do not know exactly who was responsible for the complex attacks, which killed nearly 200 people and injured more than 300, paralyzed a city with fear, and set off a geopolitical firestorm. But teary-eyed Indians are casting a vengeful gaze westward—toward Pakistan.

Who can blame them?

Pakistan is a giant hatchery of global Islamic terrorism. Few doubt that Pakistan, to one degree or another, had a role in the Mumbai massacre. “Evidence and logic suggest that radical Pakistani Islamists carried out the attack,” Stratfor chief George Friedman wrote.

Others, such as columnist Ralph Peters, believe it isn’t even an issue of whether Pakistan bears guilt, “but how direct the guilt may be“ (emphasis mine throughout). It’s unlikely the relatively new and grossly impotent civilian government of President Asif Ali Zardari is complicit, says Peters, but that doesn’t mean the military and intelligence branches of the Pakistani government are not. Both have deep ties to Islamic terrorist groups.

Pakistan’s sprawling intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (isi), might indeed be complicit in the attack. In August, the New York Times, citing U.S. government officials, wrote, “American intelligence agencies have concluded that members of Pakistan’s powerful spy service helped plan the deadly July 7 bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan.” This conclusion was based on intercepted communications between the isi and Islamic terrorists.

Whatever the details, the Mumbai massacre is covered with Pakistani fingerprints.

This isn’t surprising. Pakistan is virtually a failed state. It’s barely a country, says Peters—more like “chaos with a parliament.”

“Today no other country on Earth is arguably more dangerous than Pakistan,” wrote Ron Moreau and Michael Hirsh in Newsweeklast year. “It has everything Osama bin Laden could ask for:

political instability, a trusted network of radical Islamists, an abundance of angry young anti-Western recruits, secluded training areas, access to state-of-the-art electronic technology, regular air service to the West and security services that don’t always do what they’re supposed to do. … Then there’s the country’s large and growing nuclear program.

Pakistan is clearly a basket case. The question is, how did this happen?

Since 9/11, Washington has attempted to forge the strategically situated nation of Pakistan into a stable American ally. The Bush administration has spent countless hours of diplomacy and statecraft toward this end, not to mention the $11 billion of aid Washington funneled into Musharraf’s government and military in an effort to secure his assistance in curbing the rise of the Taliban and al Qaeda and their supporters. Islamabad has received state-of-the-art weaponry, including F-16 fighter jets.

To what end?

“After Mumbai,” wrote Robert Kagan this week, America’s strategy in Pakistan “has to be judged a failure.“

He’s right: In spite of America’s best efforts, Pakistan still has an inept and fractured civilian government, insolvent economy, intractable military, rogue intelligence agency and alarming penchant for Islamic terrorism.

America’s post-9/11 relationship with Pakistan got off to a great start. Giddy with promises of billions of dollars in aid and caches of weapons, then-president Pervez Musharraf signed himself over as a staunch ally of America, promising Washington that he wouldn’t merely allow the U.S. military to conduct operations and air strikes against terrorist targets in Pakistan, but that his country would also provide intelligence and assistance, would sever ties with the Taliban and other terrorist groups, and would itself crack down hard on the extremists operating inside its borders.

Musharraf stuck to his word—for a short while.

The problem with his efforts, observed Newsweek, was that they were always “somewhat halfhearted, constrained by the deep sympathies that many of his countrymen have for jihadists” (Oct. 29, 2007). It wasn’t that he lacked the means to track and destroy terrorists (tellingly, on more than once occasion Musharraf captured a terrorist or waged a successful battle just prior to the arrival of a high-ranking American official), but that he lacked the willpower and determination to go after them.

By 2005 and 2006, the Musharraf government was cutting deals with clans in North and South Waziristan—deals which, as Newsweek showed, invariably favored the burgeoning of Islamic terrorism in western Pakistan:

The ceasefire agreements were publicly announced as treaties with tribal elders. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The deals were made directly with the militant leaders, their frontmen or terrified tribal elders who did the militants’ bidding. As a result they were worthless: The militants had no intention of keeping their promise to stop the passage of arms and fighters across the Afghan border. While the Army halted offensive operations and dismantled checkpoints, the militants helped the Taliban and al Qaeda regroup and reinfiltrate back into Afghanistan.

Radical Islam was burgeoning in Pakistan, and Musharraf responded by cutting deals with the terrorists!

Still, America overlooked Musharraf’s treachery, and continued to shower his regime with weapons, billions of dollars’ worth of aid, and political credibility. It never held Musharraf accountable for making good on his commitments. It was too willing and too quick to turn a blind eye to Musharraf’s evil doings.

Islamic terrorism thrived under Musharraf, despite his being an ally of America and enjoying the full backing of the United States.

Last week’s carnage in India was a result of radical Islam’s relatively unimpeded growth in Pakistan under Musharraf, whose primary ally was in Washington!

It gets worse. Toward the end of 2007, it became evident that both the Pakistanis and the American government were growing tired of Pervez Musharraf. It wasn’t long before America began demanding Musharraf’s resignation, and a democratic election for a new president. Notice what Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote in January about this dangerous thinking:

[T]he president and the Democrat-controlled Congress are threatening to cut off financial and military aid if Musharraf doesn’t hold elections …. President Musharraf pleaded with them not to cut off U.S. aid. American leaders are telling Musharraf to take off his military uniform and give real freedom to that country. However, the military is the only institution that gives stability to that extremely divided country!

Mr. Flurry compared what was happening in Pakistan to the American-sponsored overthrow of the shah of Iran in 1979, which created the terrorist-sponsoring government of Iran we see today. “America’s ignorance and weakness helped to push Iran into the arms of radical Islam,” he wrote. “It could very well do the same to Pakistan—unless we learn from our history with Iran.”

He was right.

Musharraf resigned in August, and on September 9, Asif Ali Zardari was sworn is as the new, democratically elected, civilian president of Pakistan. That might have a nice ring to it, but under its new “democratically elected, civilian president,” Pakistan only descended into greater chaos. The post-Musharraf government is a convoluted web of competing politicians, judges and military men. Zardari is an impotent leader with massively restricted powers: The population is disaffected; the military and the isi are rogue; federal control over the outlying provinces, where terrorist organizations run the show, is all but non-existent; and the economy borders on collapse.

Pakistan is more dangerous than it ever has been. Just ask India!

Mr. Flurry wrote another prescient statement in that Trumpet article. “America’s problem is even worse than a weak will,” he said. “We even help push our allies into the hands of radical Islam. That is a dangerous kind of ignorance.”

In a very real sense, last week’s carnage in India gives us a picture of just how dangerous that ignorance truly is. America’s weak-willed foreign policy in Pakistan is partly responsible for the chaos it has descended into. And that failure set the stage for the Mumbai attack.

Biblical prophecy explains the reason behind the shrinking potency of America’s foreign policy. You can read about it in our article “America Has Won Its Last War.” It is also clear in describing the dangerous ramifications of this loss of American leadership in today’s world. Sadly, we can expect to see America’s global influence continue to wane, and many more such shocks as the one in Mumbai to follow.

If you’re interested in gaining regular in-depth analysis of events such as the Mumbai massacre, and in learning about the prophetic significance of these events, request your free subscription to the Trumpet in print. There isn’t a magazine on Earth that explains this chaotic world, which borders on total breakdown—or the wonderful world beyond—like the Philadelphia Trumpet.