Editorial Column: Washington is Risking War with Pakistan (They have Nuclear Weapons)





U.S. forces have been entering Pakistan for the last six years. But it was always very quietly, usually no more than a hundred yards in, and usually to meet a friendly tribal chieftain. Pakistan knew about these crossings, but it turned a blind eye because it was never splashed across the front page of the country’s newspapers. This has all changed in the last month, as the Administration stepped up Predator missile attacks. And then, after the New York Times ran an article that U.S. forces were officially given the go-ahead to enter Pakistan without prior Pakistani permission, Pakistan had no choice but to react.

On another level the Bush Administration’s decision to step up attacks in Pakistan is fatally reckless, because the cross-border operations’ chances of capturing or killing al Qaeda’s leadership are slim. American intelligence isn’t good enough for precision raids like this. Pakistan’s tribal regions are a black hole that even Pakistani operatives can’t enter and come back alive. Overhead surveillance and intercepts do little good in tracking down people in a backward, rural part of the world like this.

On top of it, is al-Qaeda worth the candle? Yes, some deadender in New York or London could blow himself up in the subway and leave behind a video claiming the attack in the name of al-Qaeda. But our going into Pakistan, risking a full-fledged war with a nuclear power, isn’t going to stop him.

Finally, there is Pakistan itself, a country that truly is on the edge of civil war. Should we be adding to the force of chaos? By indiscriminately bombing the tribal areas along the Afghan border, we in effect are going to war with Pakistan’s ethnic Pashtuns. They make up 15% of Pakistan’s 167 million people. They are well armed and among the most fierce and xenophobic people in the world. It is not beyond their military capabilities to cross the Indus and take Islamabad.

Before it is too late, someone needs to sit the President down and give him the bad news that Pakistan is a bridge too far in the “war on terror”
