WASHINGTON (AP) -- Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said
Wednesday that he would send troops into Pakistan to hunt down terrorists even
without local permission if warranted - an attempt to show strength when his
chief rival has described his foreign policy skills as naive.
The Illinois senator warned Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf
that he must do more to shut down terrorist operations in his country and evict
foreign fighters under an Obama presidency, or Pakistan will risk a U.S. troop
invasion and losing hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid.
Obama is threatening to invade an American ally in the Middle East, following on the heels of John Edwards' tough talk against an American ally in the Middle East (see earlier posting on Saudi Arabia). The Democrats are amazing. They want to sit down for tea with our enemies and give them every benefit of the doubt. But they want to invade the allies that we do have among Arab nations or give them verbal tongue lashings. And yet Bush is the one repeatedly accused of alienating our allies. At least he doesn't threaten to invade them.
AT THE SAME TIME.... Although this is clearly an attempt to shore up his image after his disastrous comments about sitting down to talk to rogue leaders, and although Obama never talks as tough to our enemies as our allies, I think there is some merit to what Obama is saying here. Osama bin Laden is believed to be holed up in this lawless region on the Pakistani/Afghan border, and I don't understand why we aren't more aggressively trying to root him out. Such an invasion, of course, could destabilize the friendly Musharraf government, so it's a precarious prospect. But the Musharraf government clearly hasn't done enough to aggressively root out Al-Qaida in this region (or can't risk doing it). Perhaps the threat of tailored invasion would provoke Musharraf into a more aggressive stance of his own in this region.
I'd also like to know from Sen. Obama why he doesn't want to go after al-Qaida with equal aggressiveness in Iraq, which is a region of far more strategic importance to our national security interests. Or has he been ignoring the importance that al-Qaida itself has accorded to Iraq? And what's his posture on Iran and Syria, since he wants to invade a friendly nation?
The headline on the AP story caught my eye: Obama vows to hunt down terrorists.
If Bush were saying this, the headline would read: Bush wants to invade American ally that didn't attack us
