Leave aside the usual NYT tics (get this, they still call terrorists and murderers “militants”) and this piece of reporting, if true, gives us an inside look at the thinking of top Pakistani military leadership in the wake of the OBL raid. And it ain’t pretty:
The United States will now push harder than ever for General Kayani to break relations with other militant leaders who American officials believe are hiding in Pakistan, with the support of the military and intelligence service, a senior American official said.
[. . .]
But those who have spoken with General Kayani recently said that demands to break with top militant leaders were likely to be too much for the military chief, who is scheduled to address an unusual, closed-door joint session of Parliament on Friday to salvage his reputation and explain the military’s lapses surrounding the American raid.
The American wish list is tantamount to an overnight transformation of Pakistan’s long held strategic posture that calls for using the militant groups as proxies against Pakistan’s neighbors, they said. It comes as General Kayani faces mounting anti-American pressure from hard-line generals in his top command, two of the people who met with him said.
Many in the lower ranks of the military have greater sympathy for the militant groups than for the United States.
To take out the leadership of these groups — longtime assets of the Pakistani Army and intelligence services — would result in such a severe backlash from the militants that a “civil war” in Pakistan would result, said a former senior Pakistani official who was consulted by General Kayani in the aftermath of the Bin Laden raid.
The general, who has been courted for nearly three years by the United States’ most senior military officers in an effort to persuade him to launch an attack against the Haqqani network in North Waziristan, was even more unlikely to do so now, the Pakistani said.
[. . .]
The army chief was described as angered that the Obama administration failed to trust him enough to tell him before the raid, asserting that in keeping him in the dark the United States had alienated Pakistan’s best friend, General Qazi said.
The whole thing is worth a read.