In one of his earliest foreign policy blunders on the trail, Obama said that he would launch strikes inside Pakistan against Al Qaeda targets without Islamabad’s permission, and his supporters have made a point of reminding everyone about this, as if they thought their candidate needed a dose of reckless hawkishness to compensate for something.  As it happens, this has also been the policy under the current administration, which doesn’t seem to embarrass the proponents of “turning the page.”  After all, what could go wrong with such a proposal?  Maybe something like this:

U.S.-led forces killed Pakistani troops in an airstrike along the volatile Afghan border that Pakistan’s army condemned on Wednesday as “completely unprovoked and cowardly.”

U.S. officials confirmed that three aircraft launched about a dozen bombs following a clash between Taliban militants and Afghan and U.S.-led coalition forces late Tuesday. Pakistan says the strikes killed 11 of its paramilitary troops.

The Pakistani army said the coalition airstrike hit a post of the paramilitary Frontier Corps and was a “completely unprovoked and cowardly act.”

It launched a strong protest and reserved “the right to protect our citizens and soldiers against aggression,” the military said in a statement.

In addition to violating Pakistani sovereignty and potentially destabilising a somewhat friendly and very important allied government, we can also add the possibility of killing allied soldiers by mistake to the rather long list of reasons why Obama and Bush have been wrong about this and, shockingly, McCain has been the sober voice of reason by comparison.  No, that last part is not a joke.  As if the Pakistani military were not demoralised enough as it is by being compelled to fight a hard counterinsurgency on our behalf, they now have to worry about their paramilitary units being mistaken for Taliban.