U.S, July 31 -- A short video of Rana Sanaullah, adviser to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on political affairs, has spent the past days ricocheting across Indian timelines under an irresistible headline: that Pakistan bred mujahideen to bleed India, and that those same fighters have now turned their guns on Pakistan itself. It is being greeted as a confession. It is worth being precise about what it actually was.

Speaking to Geo News amid the unrest in Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir, Sanaullah did concede that militants Pakistan once trained had eventually turned against the state. But the remark was not contrition; it was an accusation. His purpose was to liken the protesters now convulsing PoJK to those old fighters, armed men, in...