"President Bush secretly approved orders in July that for the first time allow American Special Operations forces to carry out ground assaults inside Pakistan without the prior approval of the Pakistani government, according to senior American officials," The New York Times reported on Thursday. "The classified orders signal a watershed for the Bush administration after nearly seven years of trying to work with Pakistan to combat the Taliban and al Qa'eda, and after months of high-level stalemate about how to challenge the militants' increasingly secure base in Pakistan's tribal areas. "American officials say that they will notify Pakistan when they conduct limited ground attacks like the Special Operations raid last Wednesday in a Pakistani village near the Afghanistan border, but that they will not ask for its permission." The Los Angeles Times added: "As part of an escalating offensive against extremist targets in Pakistan, the United States is deploying Predator aircraft equipped with sophisticated new surveillance systems that were instrumental in crippling the insurgency in Iraq, according to US military and intelligence officials. "The use of the specially equipped drones comes amid a fundamental shift in US strategy in the area. After years of deferring to Pakistani authorities, the Bush administration is turning toward unilateral American military operations - a gambit that could increase pressure on Islamic militants but risks alienating a country that has been a key counter-terrorism ally.... "American officials requested that details of the new technology not be disclosed out of concern that doing so might enable militants to evade US detection. But officials said the previously unacknowledged devices have become a powerful part of the American arsenal, allowing the tracking of human targets even when they are inside buildings or otherwise hidden from Predator surveillance cameras. "Equally important, officials said, the systems have significantly speeded up decisions on when to strike. The technology gives remote pilots a means beyond images from the Predator's lens of confirming a target's identity and precise location." The Washington Post, marking the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, said: "Pakistani officials said the CIA and the US military have played into bin Laden's hands by pursuing al Qa'eda with bombs and missiles. Pashtun tribes along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, angry at the number of civilian casualties, see the United States as the enemy, the officials said. Despite a $25 million reward posted by the US government, no one has been willing to turn in the al Qa'eda leader. " 'Unless you have people who support you, human intelligence will never work,' said Ali Muhammad Jan Aurakzai, a retired Pakistani general who oversaw efforts to track bin Laden and other al Qa'eda leaders after 2001. 'You have to have friendly people.' " In a separate report, The Post said: "This year, the US military has launched nearly a dozen airstrikes on Pakistani territory, killing several key al Qa'eda and Taliban commanders as well as many civilians. The strikes became notably more frequent after the July order was signed by Bush. "Last week, helicopter-borne US commandos crossed from Afghanistan 20 miles into Pakistan to launch a ground assault on a compound in the tribal area of South Waziristan. The United States launched a separate airstrike the next day in North Waziristan. "But it was a Sept 8 attack on a religious school run by top Taliban commander Jalaluddin Haqqani in the town of Dande Darpakhel in the tribal area of North Waziristan that appears to have provoked the most ire over the new US policy. A Pakistani intelligence official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the strikes have genuinely angered some Pakistani military officials and have raised suspicions among rank-and-file soldiers that public protests by the government are empty rhetoric." The Associated Press reported: "Pakistan's main opposition party said Friday the country could pull out of the war on terror over stepped-up attacks by US forces in the restive tribal regions bordering Afghanistan. "An aide to former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif issued the threat hours after 12 people were killed in the latest in a flurry of suspected US missile strikes into Taliban and al Qa'eda strongholds in Pakistan's lawless tribal belt along the border with Afghanistan." In an editorial, "Enough, Uncle Sam," Pakistan's The News said: "Hellfire has visited Waziristan again, killing at least seventeen and injuring an additional nineteen. Seven were Taliban and the rest - mere collateral damage. Ritual protestations follow, themselves followed by the response of assorted American spokespersons and diplomats that 'Pakistan is a sovereign nation and we respect that' - which is, of course, complete balderdash. It is as if the constant repetition of the 'sovereignty' mantra will somehow gloss over the fact that Pakistan is only sovereign inasmuch as America wishes or allows it to be; and if America chooses to violate our airspace, blow women and children to smithereens, land Special Forces units to kill a few more women and children before hopping back over the border - then so be it. The war on terror knows no borders as far as America is concerned, and it will fight that war wherever it wishes and by whatever means it chooses. If that means regularly making small-scale invasions of another sovereign country and killing a few of its citizens... then so be it. But there are unseen consequences... "There is an escalating sense of furious impotence among the ordinary people of Pakistan. Many - perhaps most - of them are strongly opposed to the spread of Talibanisation and extremist influence across the country; people who may be described as 'moderates'. Many of them have no sympathy for the mullahs and their burning of girls' schools and their medieval mindset. But if you bomb a moderate sensibility often enough it has a tendency to lose its sense of objectivity and to feel driven in the direction of extremism. If America bombs moderate sensibilities often enough you may find that its actions are the best recruiting sergeant that the extremists ever had - and the extremists will be quietly delighted at the civilian deaths as they know that more feet will turn to the path that leads to their door." The Australian reported: "Key corps commanders of Pakistan's 600,000-strong army issued orders last night to retaliate against 'invading' US forces that enter the country to attack militant targets. "The move has plunged relations between Islamabad and Washington into deep crisis over how to deal with al Qa'eda and the Taliban. "What amounts to a dramatic order to 'kill the invaders', as one senior officer put it last night, was disclosed after the commanders - who control the army's deployments at divisional level - met at their headquarters in the garrison city of Rawalpindi under the chairmanship of army chief and former ISI spy agency boss Ashfaq Kayani." In a commentary for Asharq Al-Awsat, Tariq Alhomayed said: "What America must realise is that the mission to fight 'al Qa'eda' in Pakistan in particular must be left to the Pakistani forces. It is true that international cooperation against terrorism has taken on a universal dimension and now there is a network where information is exchanged in order to confront terrorism; however the fight must be left to the country in which al Qa'eda is present.... "What America doesn't realise is that as much as it believes that it is fighting al Qa'eda, it is helping the organisation spread and is helping to mobilise fighters for it. The Americans should have learnt their lesson from Iraq where the Sahwa Councils took up arms against al Qa'eda and have been more successful in driving it out than the Americans."
"Bush Doctrine" under debate
In the US presidential election, the unilateral approach to national security that has become enshrined in a vaguely-defined "Bush Doctrine", became a subject of debate, primarily in terms of whether vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin's lack of conversance with the term was indicative of a lack of foreign policy experience. After Ms Palin was interviewed on ABC News, Slate's John Dickerson wrote: "Sarah Palin's ignorance about the specifics of 'the Bush Doctrine' in her first big network interview does not worry me. What's worrisome is her familiarity - and comfort - with Bush's general worldview. "In the pop-quiz question about the Bush Doctrine even [Ms Palin's interviewer] Charlie Gibson - who knew, presumably, what was coming - didn't define it correctly. The Bush Doctrine is about preventative military action (Gibson mistakenly used the word pre-emptive), but in its first iteration, it defined those who harbour terrorists as no different from the terrorists themselves. Later, it came to include the spread of democracy in the Middle East. Given the president's selective application of his doctrine and its subsequent revisions, it's quite possible that not even Bush knows what the Bush Doctrine is." Washington Post columnist, Charles Krauthammer - the first person to use the term "Bush Doctrine" - wrote: "Yes, Sarah Palin didn't know what it is. But neither does Charlie Gibson. And at least she didn't pretend to know - while he looked down his nose and over his glasses with weary disdain, sighing and "sounding like an impatient teacher," as the Times noted. In doing so, he captured perfectly the establishment snobbery and intellectual condescension that has characterised the chattering classes' reaction to the mother of five who presumes to play on their stage." For the purpose of setting the record straight and providing a definition of Mr Bush's doctrine that his press secretary says he is "comfortable with," the White House told The Washington Post that the doctrine has three elements: "The United States makes no distinction between those who commit acts of terror and those who support and harbour terrorists.... We will confront grave threats before they fully materialise and will fight the terrorists abroad so we don't have to face them at home.... We will counter the hateful ideology of the terrorist by promoting the hopeful alternative of human freedom."
