A big shoe drops...

"We terminated the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat mujahideen." These were the words of al-Qaeda's top commander for Afghanistan operations and spokesperson Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, immediately after the attack that claimed the life of Pakistani politician Benazir Bhutto on Thursday (December 27).

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No matter what turns out to be the truth behind the assassination of US neoliberal proxy Benazir Bhutto, there is little doubt that we have entered a new stage of dangerous global instability as a direct consequence of US foreign policy in South and Southwest Asia.

With the US created civil war in Iraq shifting into a second post-ethnic-cleansing phase, when the putative "progress" of the surge (it's no such thing) is near enough to being exposed for the deadly farce that it is, the US is now faced not with a pretext to invade another country, when it has no capacity to do so, but with what may feel like urgent necessity to our government. Civil war in Pakistan means a nuclear-armed state -- in a shaky cease-fire with a nuclear-armed neighbor (that is the second largest national population in the world) -- is now up for grabs.

The simultaneous occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan is a recipe for a worse debacle than anyone might ever have imagined... if it is possible at all.

Someone, somewhere in Washington, ought to be asking, "What have we wrought?"