US getting entangled in Pakistan is a horrible step

The US is boldly going into Pakistan. Not a good idea. According to news reports,

General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, considered by the US as a pivotal figure in the "war on terror", said yesterday Pakistan had never agreed to allow the US to operate on Pakistani territory, and that unilateral attacks risked undermining joint efforts against insurgents.
"Falling for short-term gains while ignoring our long-term interest is not the right way forward," Kayani warned.
Kayani usually keeps a low profile so his open rebuke of the US is likely to make policymakers in Washington sit up and take notice.
Today, Pakistan's prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, said Kayani reflected government opinion and policy.

All I can do is add this to my growing list of posts on Pakistan :-(

Robert Dreyfuss, writing in The Nation, compares the US' forays into Pakistan with how we expanded the war from Vietnam into the neighboring Cambodia. Dreyfuss writes,

The Times reports today that President Bush gave an order in July allowing US Special Forces "to carry out ground assaults inside Pakistan without the prior approval of the Pakistani government ...
... There could hardly be a worse strategy. It risks inflaming Pakistani public opinion against the United States and boost the religious parties. It will make the new Pakistani government look like pawns or puppets of the United States, which won't exactly make them popular among Pakistanis. And, of course, it won't be successful in eliminating Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Historians of the Vietnam war might compare the strategy to President Nixon's ill-fated decision to expand the war across the border into Cambodia in search of alleged Viet Cong "santuaries." That didn't work out well. ...
... Yesterday, testifying at a House committee, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs ("frankly, we are running out of time") pretty much confirmed the Times report: The nation's top military officer issued a blunt assessment yesterday of the war in Afghanistan and called for an overhaul in U.S. strategy there, warning that thousands more U.S. troops as well as greater U.S. military involvement across the border in Pakistan's tribal areas are needed to battle an intensifying insurgency.
Mullen has been the point man in US efforts to put pressure on Pakistan to allow more aggressive American attacks directly into Pakistan, meeting repeatedly with Kayani and other officials to demand that Islamabad surrender its national sovereignty.