It"s official. Rumsfeld is on a rampage. The hawk de la cold-war small talk that generally accompanies discussions about the Secretary of Defense is starting to look boring compared to Rummy"s latest feats in Islamabad.

News Flash: Operation Enduring Freedom is starting to look like just another military exercise: The ex-general analysts with their new suits on Fox, the virtual walk-on maps that are Joie Chen"s new carpet, National Geographic Explorer"s recent 1000th showing of Sebastian Junger"s documentary on the Afghan plight. Even ESPN has joined the fray, talking about the similarities between buzkashi, the national sport of Afghanistan which involves carrying the headless-carcass of a goat by riders on horseback, with polo, our symbol of elite sports-couture. Calling buzakshi a "rugged" version of polo, ESPN is going over the same way Rummy is, for it is actually polo which is a version of buzakshi, having been picked up by British colonial officers in the 1860s serving in what today would be northern Pakistan. Anyway, Rumsfeld and ESPN should be holding hands right now. They have overlooked the intricacies. They have become sensitively insensitive.

The insensitivity has come two-fold. The first wave has come from the Defense Department"s unyielding stance on giving up the idea of a Ramadan War. The question of continuing to engage Taliban forces, infrastructure, weaponry and the Al-Qaeda camps during Ramadan came up in the mainstream media around a month ago. As expected, the questions were a savvy potpourri of moral and political implications. At first, Rummy and his boys at Defense were ignoring any direct response to the questioning with open-ended blah. Now, as the Islamic holy month of fasting and prayer comes closer, the scenario is more black and white. Rummy wants war.

Understandably, many don"t. A recent poll in some Western European countries indicated that the American pastime of killing a mosquito with a cannon has now run its course, showing a drop in approval of the campaign in Afghanistan, particularly over the humanitarian crisis generated as a direct result of the U.S. led offensive. Skepticism in Islamic countries seems to be rising more as well. Key U.S. allies like Saudi Arabia and Egypt have already voiced concerns about the campaign continuing in Ramadan. But the gravest concerns right now are coming from Pakistan, the front-line state in the conflict, and the pivotal coalition partner to the U.S.

The second wave of insensitivity has come recently. Reading the transcript of Rumsfeld"s recent field trip to Islamabad to hold talks crucial to maintaining Pakistani support for the U.S.-led campaign is a strange experience. Here is the U.S. Sec-Def meeting President Pervez Musharraf, a military ruler who has risked the security and integrity of his country, his government and even his own military, to support the U.S., deciding against the opinion of millions of Pakistanis to "help the global cause against terrorism." Rumsfeld was expected to keep it tight with Musharraf, to tell him that the concerns of Pakistan will be appropriately addressed, and to maybe even to defer to Musharraf"s warning that continuing the campaign would produce a "huge negative fallout."

But instead of wearing a suit in Islamabad, Rummy put on blinders. He hid from the fact that public patience in Pakistan is wearing thin, that the humanitarian crisis in the region is worsening as hundreds try to cross into Pakistan every day, and that Ramadan means a lot more than fasting and prayer. Instead, Rummy confirmed that the war would go on, fasting or not, and that the U.S. would even consider launching tactical nuclear weapons if necessary. On the home front, his views were aired by CNN, where tactical nukes suddenly started to sound like a sexy alternative to an extended ground war (something that could start Vietnamesque protests in colleges as more and more collateral damage opon civilians is sustained and Red Cross centers are "accidentally" destroyed). Alas, the talking heads on Fox came up with ludicrous analysis, like "Muslims have fought each other in Ramadan before" and "if you can have sex and food after dark in Ramadan, why cant you have some bombs?"

In effect, some aspects of the "global cause against terrorism" are not global at all. They"re very American, and they"re very ethnocentric. Rumsfeld"s remarks might have been fodder to an anthraxedly boring media here, but they have loosely united the media, the military and the strategic thinkers of Pakistan as well as other Islamic and non-Islamic states to condemn thoughts about tactical nukes and the Ramadan War, and to reconsider their support to the U.S. Seeing his chance, bin Laden has recently come out on Al-Jazeera and reemphasized the crusade-like aspect of the U.S.-led campaign, while even Salman Rushdie has written an opinion piece about how, despite of whatever anyone says, this war is about Islam.