That the US is testing the water and forcing the issue of the drone attacks is apparent. For several weeks through the campaign for the parliamentary election in Pakistan, Washington suspended the drone attack. Now a pattern is emerging. No sooner than the election results came out signalling the victory by Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (N), the interlude was broken with a drone attack on May 29. The attack was “fruitful” insofar as it resulted in the killing of the Pakistani Taliban’s deputy head Wali-ur Rehman. Rehman’s death constituted a huge blow to the militants and both Washington and Islamabad had reason to be satisfied. In...

After two women trying to inoculate Pakistani children against polio were shot this week, some news accounts were quick to place blame: “Anti-polio workers started being attacked after a Pakistani doctor, Shakeel Afridi, ran a fake polio campaign in the city of Abbottabad to help the United States track down Osama bin Laden,” reported NBC News. The World Health Organization, which employed the women — one of whom died — reports that 18 of its workers or their bodyguards have been slain since last July. Actually, Afridi’s campaign involved vaccination against hepatitis B, not polio, but that distinction has been lost amid...