Pakistan has reason to feel anger: US Senator

The White House and State Department want a negotiated settlement of the issue, While US military wants to exert maximum pressure on Taliban before withdrawal.Pakistan had reason to feel that the US had violated its sovereignty, says New York Time. The leading US Newspaper has also cited a US democratic Senator Richard J. Durbin who said while talking to FOX news, “Imagine how we would feel if it had been 24 American soldiers killed by Pakistani forces at this moment,” The paper further said the reaction inside Pakistan nonetheless followed a now-familiar pattern of anger and tit-for-tat retaliation. So did the American response of regret laced with frustration and suspicion. Each side’s actions reflected a deepening distrust that gets harder to repair with each clash. The paper also citing Vali Nasr, a former deputy to the administration’s regional envoy, Richard C. Holbrooke, and now a professor at Tufts University.that the United States effectively has not one but two strategies for winning the war in Afghanistan. While the State Department and the White House believe that only a negotiated political solution will end the war, American military and intelligence commanders believe that they must maximize pressure on the Taliban before the American military withdrawal begins in earnest before 2014.In recent months American forces have complained that they have taken mortar and rocket fire from positions in Pakistani territory, as officials said they did early Saturday in the Mohmand region, just north of the Khyber Pass, prompting American troops to call in airstrikes. “It’s a case of the tail wagging the dog,” Mr. Nasr said. When they respond forcefully along the border, “U.S. commanders on the ground are deciding U.S.-Pakistan policy.”