U.S. is alienating Pakistan with new drone strikes.
Barely a day after being issued a public warning about CIA activity in Pakistan, the U.S. went ahead and bombed the country anyway. Now, maybe we're back to the tacit understanding whereby Pakistan's leaders publicly denigrate the U.S. and privately allow us to prosecute the drone war. If not, this strike seems deliberately provocative and reckless. It would be one thing if the administration had bin Laden in its sites and had to take the shot (totally justifiable, in my view), but here's how the New York Times described the targets:
'The targets of the attack were militants commanded by Maulvi Nazir, a Taliban leader from South Waziristan who is closely allied to the Haqqani network, the main Afghan Taliban group supported by the Pakistani military. American and Pakistani intelligence officials say Mr. Nazir is known to harbor Arabs affiliated with Al Qaeda. The Haqqani network and fighters associated with it are also responsible for many of the attacks against American and Afghan troops in eastern Afghanistan.
The drones struck a double-cabin pickup truck and a motorcycle as they returned from Afghanistan into Pakistan, a Pakistani military official said. Seven fighters were killed and six others were wounded in the attack just south of the village of Angor Adda on the border between the two countries.
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Bombing a few Taliban fighters vs. undermining and embarrassing a crucial ally against al-Qaeda. Stoking anti-Americanism in Pakistan is just a monumentally short-sighted thing to do if you want to retain the country's cooperation and ensure that its citizens (and, crucially, expats living in places like the UK) don't fill the ranks of al-Qaeda. But such are the wages of nation building in Afghanistan.