What happened
The U.S. military released video footage it said showed men firing on Afghan troops near Afghanistan's disputed northeastern border with Pakistan. The clash ended with U.S. airstrikes that Pakistan blamed for the deaths of 11 of its soldiers. (The Washington Post, with a link to military video).
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It’s time for the U.S. to stop tiptoeing around “in deference to Islamabad,” said Investor’s Business Daily in an editorial. Pakistan’s government has consistently “hamstrung our operations with unreasonable restrictions" while "al Qaida only grows stronger.” The Bush doctrine of preemptive strikes against terrorists makes sense everywhere else; it should be applied in Pakistan, too.
The disturbing thing about this clash, said Syed Saleem Shahzad in Asia Times, is that it suggests that “Pakistani soldiers were fighting alongside Taliban forces against Afghan army and U.S. units in the border area.” That will certainly bolster critics who say the U.S. is coddling Pakistan while its military “is playing a ‘double game’ and can no longer be trusted.” But Washington can only push Islamabad so hard, because losing Pakistan altogether “would be a devastating setback.”
