As if our war with al Qaida weren’t already exciting enough, said Robin Wright in The Washington Post, the game now has a shot clock. In the mountainous wilderness along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, the U.S. has frantically stepped up its air campaign, striking at least three sites in recent weeks, killing around 45 al Qaida and Taliban jihadists. The flurry of attacks arises from the Bush administration’s effort to “inflict as much damage as it can” on terrorist encampments before Pakistan’s newly elected government tells us to stop. This new chill in our relations with Pakistan is “very worrying,” said The New York Times in an editorial, but perhaps President Bush should have thought of the possible consequences before spending six years trying to prop up the “destructive authoritarian rule” of Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf. The White House “bet everything” on Musharraf and gained nothing—unless you count the “visceral mistrust” of an entire, strategically vital, nuclear-armed nation.
The picture isn’t quite that bleak, said Laura King in the Los Angeles Times. It’s true that many Pakistanis are angry at the U.S.—not only for supporting the widely loathed Musharraf but for the airstrikes in the tribal regions, which were answered by dozens of horrific suicide bombings against Pakistani civilians. The reality, nevertheless, is that while we may not be popular, “there are still many areas in which the new government is likely to work with the United States, including counterterrorism.” As new Prime Minister Yusaf Gillani put it in his inaugural policy address, “this is our fight, too.” Besides, said Richard Holbrooke in The Washington Post, let’s not lose sight of the big picture. A “vibrant democratic process” has returned to Pakistan. To the murderous theocrats of al Qaida, this is hardly good news.
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