I think

..."accusing the government of failing to do all it could to track down Al Qaeda." Which government failed to do all it could, ours or theirs? We were supposed to wipe out Osama and Al Qaeda - that was the reason for invading Afghanistan. Then we got distracted by Iraq. We still haven't focused on Al Qaeda, conflating the Taliban with them and now somehow thinking "nation building" in Afghanistan is the mission. We've got foreign policy ADHD!

I suspect the Pakistanis planned the Waziristan incursion for Secretary Clinton's benefit, to attempt to deflect any criticism she might launch against Pakistani policy. Sending a division or two of heavy troops on a sweep through an insurgent stronghold will do nothing to clean up the insurgency. After watching the French experience in Indo-China, the American experience in South Vietnam and the prior Soviet experience in Afghanistan, haven't we learned anything? We need the Pakistanis to base those units, several divisions worth, in Waziristan in company-sized segments so they can actually control the population and terrain. Until the Pakistanis begin to talk about doing something like that, their big-unit operations are intended to show the US that they're finally doing something, nothing more.

October 31, 2009

By MARK LANDLER

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — For Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has had her ups and downs with the news media, the prospect of spending three days under the remorseless glare of the Pakistani news media might have felt like an unwelcome return to a time right before the New Hampshire primary.

Yet Mrs. Clinton, whose press clippings since she became secretary of state have been kinder than when she was a presidential candidate, rolled with the punches this week in a media-saturated tour of Pakistan. She submitted to four round-table interviews over three days in which Pakistan’s leading journalists took their best shots at her, and she even counterpunched once or twice.

By the time she left Islamabad on Friday, she appeared to have fought Pakistan’s fourth estate to a draw.

“On the whole, Ms. Clinton made a very deliberate effort to bridge the divide that has recently grown and talked of constructing a special relationship,” said an editorial in The News, one of Pakistan’s main English-language daily newspapers. It did, however, chide her for snarling traffic in Lahore, the country’s second-largest city, which she visited on Thursday under elaborate security.

Engaging Pakistan’s unruly media was perhaps Mrs. Clinton’s most important job on this visit. Newspapers and television drive public opinion more here than in many countries, and the coverage is sharply critical of the United States, tapping into deep Pakistani resentment.

That poses a problem for the Obama administration, which needs Pakistan to join its campaign to fight extremists and stabilize Afghanistan. The latest spike in anti-American sentiment here was driven by media reports that a new aid bill would infringe on Pakistan’s sovereignty.

“I will admit that clearly there is a lot of misperception, and perception is reality, so therefore it is up to us to try to set it straight,” Mrs. Clinton said Wednesday in an interview with seven television journalists. “Frankly, I think one of the problems is that we did not have a program to reach out to the Pakistani press. That will never happen again.”

Najam Sethi, the editor in chief of The Daily Times, another English-language paper, said “the media is part of the problem, not the solution.” Much of the news media, he said, are driven by fervent nationalism and uncritical support for Pakistan’s murky entanglements with radical groups in the region.

After the press was unshackled by President Pervez Musharraf during his last years in power, it exploded into a cacophony of publications, many of which gleefully traffic in rumors.

“She did well to interact,” Mr. Sethi said. “She may not have made many new friends, but she certainly didn’t make new enemies.”

Mrs. Clinton sat down first with the TV journalists because they set the agenda. So great is their influence that the questions posed to Mrs. Clinton by young people the next day sounded like those the broadcasters had asked — blunt and combative, though just short of rude.

A typical example came Friday at an interview for the program “Our Voice” when a young woman asked Mrs. Clinton whether she viewed the Predator drone attacks used by the United States in Pakistan’s frontier areas as terrorism.

“No, I do not,” she replied.

more

Rafia Zakaria (Amnesty International USA)

Dawn(Pakistan) -

... The US dithering on the issue of whether or not it will choose to have a stronger troop presence in Afghanistan and the confusion regarding whether its efforts will be directed against the Taliban or Al Qaeda represent deepening divisions and unclear objectives.

The conundrum is exacerbated further by the diminishing influence of Obama’s special envoys to the region on policy discussions regarding Afghanistan and Pakistan. The sidelining of special envoy Richard Holbrooke from discussions with President Karzai on the issue of run-off elections is yet another example of the fact that those actually negotiating with players in the region are losing crucial ground.

Ultimately, the absence of a cohesive US strategy towards Pakistan beyond urgings
to take the threat of the Taliban seriously is reflective of an omission that is likely to impose both political and strategic costs on the United States. For Pakistan, the war against the Taliban is territorial and directed specifically at gaining back control of specific regions. For the US, the connections drawn between its national security concerns and fighting territorial wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan are far more complex.

The evasive logic of these connections has become especially problematic when US policy towards Pakistan is exposed as a lurid hodgepodge of drone attacks, aid packages and diplomatic urgings to fight the Taliban. Given the already fragile relationship between the US and Pakistan, the absence of a comprehensive and clear plan towards the region does little to reassure Pakistanis that their status as American allies will continue in the years to come.

_{I feel the American worker has been sacrificed to the capitalist idols in the ancient Mayan fashion. - Sue Lamb, NYT reader}

She wouldn't answer a single question on drone attacks saying that she couldn't talk about methods, etc. Of course, to do so would make her a part of attacks that look illegal by just about any interpretation of international law.

Not doing enough: The Pakistani's are dying in the fight against the the Taliban. This includes military deaths and those of citizens who are victims of repeated bombings of late. The Pakistani Army is consistently pushing around the Taliban and winning every encounter. They're taking Waziristan seriously this time in a campaign that was largely due to public outrage. Pakistan is new to democracy so they have the notion that the government is actually supposed to respond to the overwhelming demands of citizens.

And what would are our rulers be doing about Al Qaeda? Well, we invaded Iraq and ...

McClatchy, By Saeed Shah, October 30

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- After three days of encounters with America-bashing Pakistanis -- who rejected her contention that the U.S. and Pakistan face a common enemy -- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Friday that "we're not getting through."

Prominent women and tribesmen from the North West Frontier Province delivered the same hostile message that she'd heard the two preceding days from students and journalists: Pakistanis aren't ready to endorse American friendship despite an eight-year-old anti-terrorism alliance between the countries and a multi-billion-dollar new U.S. aid package.

Clinton put her case directly to the public Friday in televised appearances in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, fielding angry questions about the alleged activities of U.S. contractor Blackwater in Pakistan, the tough conditions that came with a $1.5 billion-a-year American aid package and alleged U.S. favoritism toward Pakistan's archenemy, India.

One tribesman bluntly told her: "Your presence in the region is not good for peace."

"We are fighting a war that is imposed on us. It's not our war. It is your war," journalist Asma Shirazi told Clinton during the women's meeting. "You had one 9-11. We are having daily 9-11s in Pakistan."

[...]

"The problem is that we want American dollars but we, as a country, hate Americans," Abida Hussain, a former Pakistani ambassador to Washington, told McClatchy. "We're not perfect, but we want the Americans to be perfect."