There are two things. There was the moral responsibility, and that, first, is creating an atmosphere where the security forces can kill with impunity, where they can turn up at a place, shoot seven people - really at point-blank fashions - and then get away with it and be, in fact, promoted. And then there is the actual responsibility, the governmental responsibility. My aunt's government forbade us, initially, from filing a police report - which is every Pakistani citizen's right under the law.

We didn't have an indigenous Taliban before 2008. We didn't have a war in Swat before 2008, we didn't have a war in Waziristan. We never, in our 63-year history, we have never allowed unmanned Predator drones from ANY country to fly over our skies and kill our citizens.

However, I think we have to go back to the American bogeyman - we have to understand that this is a country which currently allows American drones to fly over our skies and bomb our people on an almost weekly basis, this is a country that survives on American aid in the billions. Today's headline in the newspapers is about America stepping up arms supplies to Pakistan.

In fact, if you look at people within our government, they seem to be quite enthusiastically fighting the war against their own people at the behest of the United States. So it doesn't seem to me that the strong way to oppose this is by joining politics at all, but just to keep speaking and to keep talking about it.

Pakistan is, I always feel, hopeful. You know, our system of government is not, and the system of foreign policy whereby we do whatever is asked of us as long as the price is right only proves to fundamentalist outfits and to militant groups that when we talk of things like democracy, when we talk of things like foreign policy, what we're really talking about is being pro-American.

I have to say I like Obama a lot. His record is the best. He's always been vocal about his opposition to the war in Iraq. Frankly, he seems very good in a lot of ways.

If you ask most Pakistanis, they believe earnestly that Republicans are the best, because they'll give us a lot of money, aide and weapons. The average person forgets that, in return, we have to do the American's dirty work for them.