Who Is REALLY Running Pakistan?

Hint: It ain't these numbnuts:

Explosives placed on a bicycle detonated outside the gates of the consulate in the city of Herat, said Naeem Khan, spokesman for the Pakistani Embassy in the Afghan capital, Kabul.

He said a policeman was wounded but according to Mir Ahmad, a police official in Herat, two people were hurt — a police guard and a woman. …

Pakistan’s government was quick to condemn the blast and remind the Afghan government of its duty to protect diplomatic offices. “We hope that Government of Afghanistan will take its responsibility seriously,” a statement from Pakistan’s foreign ministry said.

Ensign Ed provides what should be an utterly unnecessary reminder of where that responsibility truly lies:

Are they kidding?  Afghanistan has fought a war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda for seven years — groups that base themselves in Pakistan and regularly cross the border for their operations.  Kabul and NATO have demanded that Pakistan take action to stop them, and what has Pakistan done?  They have cut deals with terrorists that allow them to step up their attacks in Afghanistan.

Now suddenly, Islamabad wants Kabul to “take its responsibility seriously”[?]

Part of the Gilani regime's responsibility is cracking down on the ISI, the pro-Islamist Pakistani spy agency.  At least rein them in as much as one-time strongman and now figurehead president Pervez Musharraf had managed between 9/11 and last year.

And here we come back to the same nitwittery I've been citing ever since Benazir Bhutto was assassinated.  Democracy is fine, democracy is great, but there is a time and a place for it in a nation-building context, and that is generally AFTER the war has been won.  Heck, we can't control the seditious impulses of the CIA, so how is it we didn't consider when bullying Musharraf last fall into bringing back Pak democracy that the elected appeasers that would be titularly running the show in Islamabad might just possibly have a bit 'o difficulty riding herd on an ISI that inarguably went rogue a decade ago and hasn't changed its stripes since?  Might it not have been more [*AHEM*] practical to give Musharraf the latitude he needed to make sure that his spooks couldn't engage in THIS kind of mischief?:

American intelligence agencies have concluded that members of Pakistan's powerful spy service helped plan the deadly July 7 bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, according to United States government officials.

The conclusion was based on intercepted communications between Pakistani intelligence officers and militants who carried out the attack, the officials said, providing the clearest evidence to date that Pakistani intelligence officers are actively undermining American efforts to combat militants in the region.

The American officials also said there was new information showing that members of the Pakistani intelligence service were increasingly providing militants with details about the American campaign against them, in some cases allowing militants to avoid American missile strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

Concerns about the role played by Pakistani intelligence not only has strained relations between the United States and Pakistan, a longtime ally, but also has fanned tensions between Pakistan and its archrival, India. Within days of the bombings, Indian officials accused the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, of helping to orchestrate the attack in Kabul, which killed 54, including an Indian defense attaché.

This is, in the technical intelligence vernacular, bullbleep.  I would (generously) assert that Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and his PPP/PNL-N ruling coalition, at the very least, don't have the stones to confront the ISI.  But even if you can be more generous than I and credit him with that courage - which then raises the pregnant question of why he has not - the (again generous) extrapolation is that he does not possess the ability to put a stop to ISI actions that are both alienating their planetary hegomon ally and escalating the risk of another military confrontation with their rather large (and nuclear-armed) neighbor to the east, which understandably doesn't appreciate its old rival facilitating the bombing of its embassies and the resumption of "assymetrical" hostilities in the still disputed Kashmir region.

It continues to be a remarkable irony that the Bush overenfatuation with premature Wilsonian democratizing of the Middle East is dragging the United States inexorably toward the erstwhile crazy Pakistan policy The Man From On High once phonily proclaimed.  But it's getting to the point where the difference between official passive tolerance of aid to the enemy from an ostensible ally in the war on terror and its active support is shrinking rapidly - as is what we have to lose by taking matters into our own hands if Gilani will not.