Having, with much hoopla, launched wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, each disastrous in its own way, the Bush administration in its waning months seems intent on a slo-mo launching of a third war in the border regions of Pakistan. Almost every day now news trickles out of intensified American strikes – by Hellfire-missile armed Predator drones, or even commando raids from helicopters – in the Pakistani tribal areas along the Afghan border; and there is a drumbeat of threats of more to come. All of this, in turn, is reportedly only "phase one" of a three-phase Bush administration plan in which the American military "gloves" would "come off." Think of this as the green-lighting of a new version of that old Vietnam-era tactic of "hot pursuit" across national borders, or think of it simply as the latest war.


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