So apparently we’re at war with Pakistan.

Today the Pakistan Army announced that it has given orders to all its troops to open fire on American military personnel who have been staging unauthorized raids into Pakistani territory for months (if not years).

Considering that we just barely finished installing our own meat puppet as the new President, that ought to give you some indication of just how much daily leadership control of the country the army still has there. It also demonstrates just how tightly we had the vise on Musharraf’s nuts to get him to go along with our demands and generally overlook the American military raids in the countryside for the last four or five years. With Mushy out of office, we’ve apparently lost our throttle over the rest of the military leadership, and our ability to install a “sympathetic” figurehead doesn’t amount to anything.

Since it doesn’t look like the Bush Administration is going to get its wish to start a war with Iran (which has also been fending off these border strikes for a couple of years), it must be making all the little neocons clap paws with glee to extend their Eternal War somewhere. Tom Englehardt, who blogs for The Nation, sets up some background information for you and offers an excerpt from Pakistani journalist Tariq Ali’s new book The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power. If the assertions here are valid, we aren’t going to NEED a war with Iran, because we’ll have our hands full fucking up Pakistan (which, BTW, actually DOES have nuclear weapons and may be willing to use them).

And before the Democrats get too smug here, keep in mind that Barack Obama supports the raids into Pakistan as part of his “plan” to “fight al Quaeda”, just as he continues to support the war in Afghanistan. In other words, don’t expect either candidate to bring about any CHANGE as far as the war-mongering goes, regardless of which one wins. We are only getting started, it seems.