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that the US is far more likely to nuke Pakistan than Pakistan the US. Basically, that's what the US told Mush just after 9/11 and he told the Pakistani people that he had no choice but to cooperate with the US. It was "a deal that he couldn't refuse," in Mafia jargon. Never got reported in the US media though.

Are likely to find themselves being shot at by Pakistani troops as well as the Taliban and Al Qaida.

I think Bush's "deal" still stands: "You are with us or against us." If Pakistan gets out of line, they will become the enemy. The US demonstrated what it does to enemies in "Shock and Awe" in Iraq. The US isn't too good (yet) in fourth gen warfare against non-state guerrillas, but it's deadly state to state with armies.

McCain will keep the same policy and probably be even more forceful about it. These are black and white thinkers. (McCain's already promised to get OBL and says he has a "secret plan." Remind you of Nixon?)

I suspect that ISI gets this and will try some work around to avoid a direct confrontation with the US that will destroy the Pakistani ruling elite and completely destabilize the country, returning it to the Stone Age, like Iraq. Would the US really do this? Oh, yes.

...come very easily to this type of accommodation. Pakistani strategists view their involvement in Afghanistan as absolutely essential - their [peculiar to my mind] version of strategic depth is dependent on it. Add to that the perhaps more alarming notion that some of these guys appear to have become true believers, and it gets ugly. In their minds a stable Afghanistan is predisposed to alliance with India and Iran, a prospect which seems to be of great concern to them. They've already gone to the extent of [not very subtly] facilitating the bombing of the Indian embassy in Afghanistan - that seems to me to be a pretty strong indication that they're going to go a long way on this one.

"A survey data set containing imputed values should not be analyzed uncritically as if all the data were real values." ~ Graham Kalton

advantage to keep being fence sitters? To keep US money flowing in? I gotta think it is to the ISI advantage to keep the tribal areas and leaders on simmer. It seems that as soon as the violence gets too far out of hand they rein them in. It makes me wonder if Zardari will be as nimble as Mush at pulling rabbits out of his ass hat when push comes to shove from the US.

I think that the signal Bush is sending is that fence-sitting isn't going to hack it anymore. If Pakistan won't police the tribal areas, the US will, without consulting them. This is hugely significant escalation, because it isn't at all clear where the "tribal areas" end. The extremists are situated all over Pakistan and are using the tribal areas in particular at the moment because they are next to Afghanistan, where the US and NATO are. But this isn't just a problem with the tribal areas.

"Some elements" of the ISI are allied with the "Islamists," or "Islamo-fascists." What these terms really mean is "Wahabis." Saudi Arabia is the center of Wahabism and is exporting to the rest of the Islamic world. So you can see where this is eventually going.

...between the ISI "faction" (for lack of a better word) that thinks support for these guys is a good idea and the rest of the Pakistani government, even the defence establishment. I think fence sitting benefits the mainstream to some extent, but it's not clear to me what the guys that are offering this support get out of the fence sitting - what would the US offer them that they would value more?

"A survey data set containing imputed values should not be analyzed uncritically as if all the data were real values." ~ Graham Kalton

The US has already showered billions of dollars and all kinds of sophisticated military toys on the Pakistani government and military. Therefore, one would be led to conclude that both the support and fence sitting are the result of either commitment to the opponents of the US or inability to oppose them effectively, perhaps for fear of destabilizing Pakistan from within, or some combination of these.

It seems that the US may have exhausted the options to move these folks with positive reinforcement and so has moved of necessity to negative reinforcement: "If you won't or can't, we will, and we won't be taking to you about it beforehand any more." The bargaining chips may now have a hard and sharp edge.

My read is that the US felt it has no choice but to go ahead and go into Pakistan publicly without prior Pakistani knowledge and permission, now that its chief ally is out. They probably don't yet have a similar relationship with the new power center, and it may be that one has not even coalesced yet. The US can't afford to hang out in the vacuum and wait around for something to happen.

My response was to are likely to find themselves being shot at by Pakistani troops as well as the Taliban and Al Qaida.. I'm pretty sure that Pakistan doesn't want to line its forces up against the US. They will try to work the same kind of duplicitous maneuvers that they have been since day one, and Bush as just sent the signal that their game is over. The US is coming in, like it or not, if they won't or can't handle it.

The Pakistani/ISI response is not yet clear other than bluster.

I'm surprised how little this fact is being noted in the posts on the Pakistan incursions. When Obama played the tough guy and proposed this I often commented how dangerous the proposal was with Pakistan being a nuclear power with a barely stable government and a very strong radical faction which might easily take power. But Obama could do no wrong. Now he just can't seem to do much of anything. Maybe it'll help if he goes on Bill O'Reilly again. This while McCain and Palin whip the corporate press and media into line - the Republican repugnant line.

This is huge. Comparable to Nixon's expanding the Vietnam Conflict into Cambodia by bombing.

Afghanistan is heating up and Pakistan is coming apart and the US is going to have to deal with it. It's unthinkable that the US will allow OBL and Qaeda a safe haven there. The focus is about to shift from Iraq and probably from Iran too.

...is this:

As an alternative to American ground operations, some Pakistani officials have made clear that they prefer the C.I.A.’s Predator aircraft, operating from the skies, as a method of killing Qaeda operatives. The C.I.A. for the most part has coordinated with Pakistan’s government before and after it has launched missiles from the drone. On Monday, a Predator strike in North Waziristan killed several Arab Qaeda operatives.

held as a preference, given the high civilian toll such ops all too frequently entail? Cynical bastard that I am, I tend to think that at least part of it is because Predators fly away after they've done the nasty and don't exploit the site for intelligence, and they don't find stuff that leads to awkward questions about what sorts of support the guys that got slotted received and from whom they got it.

"A survey data set containing imputed values should not be analyzed uncritically as if all the data were real values." ~ Graham Kalton

Bombing and invading them in 1969-71 didn't help them or us much. I doubt that going head-to-head with Pakistan will do much other than put an extremist regime not friendly to us in power.

...at least not the aspect you're referring to. The scale of Cambodia was orders of magnitude greater than this. A more appropriate analogy, to my mind at least, would be MACV-SOG cross-border operations in Laos and Cambodia.

"A survey data set containing imputed values should not be analyzed uncritically as if all the data were real values." ~ Graham Kalton

The scale of Cambodia was orders of magnitude greater than this.

More and more the US is going to have to be directly involved in Pakistan. The Pakistanis are not going to deal with the problem themselves and CIA ops haven't been able to handle it. Bush has therefore had to up the ante to put the Pakistanis on notice of what's coming down on their heads.

They are pushing now because they see him as a lame duck. Cowboy Bush isn't taking that bait.

But surely our military strategists remember that it was precisely this same situation that made occupation of Afghanistan hell for the Soviets.

Russia might well be the wildcard in all of this. Pakistan needs energy and Russia has it.

Russia wasn't attacked. The US was, as we commemorate tomorrow, lest anyone forget.

The US has to deal with the Islamist challenge whether it likes it or not. It isn't going away as long as the US remains an imperial power claiming global hegemony.

When you are an empire, you have to deal with the challenges to your rule, and successful empires have dealt with such challenges pretty ruthlessly. It goes with the territory.

We aren't playing softball here. The people we are dealing with are very, very tough, and we are countering them with our elite forces.

We would probably have invaded Afghanistan anyway.

We went to war with the Taliban because they wouldn't turn over OBL. Seven years later after a lot of excuses, it's not clear that they could have turned him over had they wanted to.

9/11/2001 changed the world. Someone attacked the US and launched a global hot war that now escalating as attention shifts from Afghanistan and then Iraq to Afghanistan/Pakistan and Iraq/Iran/Syria/Hezbollah.

This is not a question of an isolated "terrorist attack" and taking vengeance. Rather, the US is being force to defend its empire and in the process the US is also taking steps to extend and consolidate it.

In other words, this is not simply a tactical situation but a national policy/security matter of utmost importance, and it involves the foundations of US global strategy, both military and extra-military, e.g., economic.

This is a struggle of epic proportions historically and its outcome will determine the face of the globe of a long time, as well as the fate of the US as a world power and its destiny as the global hegemon.

No, no and no again. This was not an "attack." This was not a "global hot war." This was not a struggle of epic proportions. This was a remarkably successful act by a fringe group of dangerous people who understood that time was running out on them. We should have simply been patient and let the clock run out, while picking them off one by one.

All of this ranting and raving and escalating and attacking sovereign nations is turning this step by step by step into what you apparently want it to be. And attacking Pakistan will take us one more step in that direction. But, of course, you were being ironic.

The tragedy, of course, is that we are pissing away our empire over phantom issues.

Keep drinking the cool aid.

When you go for empire, you meet challenges. If you think 9-ll wasn't a direct challenge, just stand by.

Georgia, BTW, was just the latest move in the game. The US just lost there big time. The landscape is shifting fast.

But that is because we consistently keep choosing the wrong battlefield.

We keep forcing others onto the military battlefield. We cannot and will not win there without the sort of ruthlessness displayed by, lets say the Romans.

The battlefield we should be choosing is commerce. That, not Star Wars, brought down the Soviets and that, not our tin horn militarism would have made merely a memory of OBL and his like.

But, because folks with your penchant for war and history, keep forcing us on to military battlefields we are more and more ceding our one great strength to others. It was Rommel, I think, who remarked that we were to be feared not because we were so great militarily but because our commerce and industry would eventually expand any beachhead we could secure. Now he was talking about the fact that, as in our Civil War, the lesser side from a military strategy etc side won out because of its commercial and industrial dominance. Marcuse made a similar point.

I am sick and tired of blood lust winning out over the homelier and slower virtues.

But, because folks with your penchant for war and history, keep forcing us on to military battlefields we are more and more ceding our one great strength to others.

I am simply expressing what I see as the US position and where it is leading, not defending it.

My view is that the US should get out of the business of empire and neo-colonialism, and can the Milton Friedman-Friedrich Hayek Chicago School of neo-liberal socio-economic policy on which it is based. Search on Naomi Klein Disaster Capitalism, for example.

However, this will take a moral and intellectual conversion that will likely require the US to pass through fire in order to merit. No serious political candidate is talking about this nor are many suggesting it. Any who do, like Dennis Kucinich, garner scant support and are quickly marginalized by the media.

Noam Chomsky, et al. "Who?" They are considered to be beyond the pale.

Good to see we are in agreement. But why your opening about drinking the Kool Aid? If we are right it is them that is/are drinking the Kool Aid.

No, no and no again. This was not an "attack." This was not a "global hot war." This was not a struggle of epic proportions. This was a remarkably successful act by a fringe group of dangerous people who understood that time was running out on them. We should have simply been patient and let the clock run out, while picking them off one by one.

This was indeed an attack and not by a fringe group. If OBL was behind it, and I believe he was, it was designed to start the ball rolling toward bankrupting the US, as OBL has stated explicitly. This is going for the throat of the empire in a spectacular display of 4th gen warfare against a superpower.

If the US had not responded, OBL would have hit again, but given the flailing response, he didn't have to and hasn't needed to since. The idea that the Bush response has prevented another attack is silly. OBL hasn't needed one, and he doesn't waste ammo like the US does.

In that sense, the attack was indeed huge in proportion, and it has been remarkably successful in its unfolding, due to the hubris and ineptitude of the Bushies, as well as due to the fact that two oilmen are running the US government, and the scion of the Bush crime family is president. All OBL has had to do, pretty much , is sit back and watch the US trash around, hemorrhaging blood and treasure probably more foolishly than he could have imagined in his wildest dreams.

I'm simply reporting on events as objectively as possible and attempting to provide a context in which to understand them in terms of policy, strategy and tactics, as well as history, both past and unfolding.

If the 9/11 attack, had as its goal, the bankrupting of the US, how would you categorize the "free trade" arrangements? Foreign governments are holding enough of our paper to sink us anytime they want, so we're pretty much their thrall. Witness the action with FNMA and FMAC. And we're still bleeding our assets at the rate of, what, 60 billion a month?

China is not our friend.

that W is a Qaeda mole. He couldn't be doing much more to assist OBL in bankrupting the US. :)

The so-called "free trade agreements" are part and parcel of US neo-liberal, neo-imperial, and neo-colonial policy. They are on US terms that take advantage of the less developed and less powerful in the name of granting them access to US markets.

Going into Pakistan (one general has already stated that his troops will fire on US/UN forces if they cross the border) can potentially turn into a battle against every militant Islamic faction in the area, united against a single western foe, providing strong motivation for new recruits.

This could mean decades of fighting with no clear victory.

The sad truth is that the war against Al Qaeda has been ineptly prosecuted.

the issue here is Bush's public admission of sending special forces into Pakistan without Pakistani knowledge or permission, a violation of Pakistani sovereignty, and technically a mini-invasion. The change is that now the Pakistani government is opposing the US and even threatening retaliation.

This is a huge change. What happened to make it happen? Who gets what and who loses what? What are the policy, strategy and tactics here.

It may well be that under the new government a new relationship between the US and Pakistani government is necessary, for example, where the US takes direct responsibility for what happens, and the Pakistani government "complains" about it publicly and even "shows opposition," giving the impression to the Pakistani people that it is opposing the US when it is complicit.

Whatever. The fact that the US has impinged on Pakistani sovereignty and claims the right to continue is big news.