While the hopeful POTUS DNC candidate jets around Europe and the Middle East to meet with leaders he will be “dealing with for the next eight to 10 years,” - along with an adoring media circus in tow - it’s amazing how all reports of his “tour of duty” manage to ellude the gaping hole in Obama’s Middle East foreign policy strategy. Were he serious about his transfer of the battle against the Global Islamic Jihad Movement to Afghanistan, his first stop should have been Pakistan.
Instead, that is the one place Obama fears to tread. He has not laid the groundwork well for US relations with the Pakistani allied government, and they have noticed. It started back in August 2007, when Obama announced his cowboy policy towards Pakistan, saying:
Back in August, I said we should work with the Pakistani government, first of all to encourage democracy in Pakistan, and secondly, that we have to press them to do more to take on al Qaeda in their territory,” the Illinois Democrat, who now threatens to strike at Senator Hillary Rodham Hillary in New Hampshire after a stunning performance in Iowa, said.
“What I said was, if they could not or would not do so, and we had actionable intelligence, then I would strike.”
Pakistan wasted no time in responding to the junior Senator’s threats of invasion.
Pakistan criticized U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama on Friday for saying that, if elected, he might order unilateral military strikes against terrorists hiding in this Islamic country.
Top Pakistan officials said Obama’s comment was irresponsible and likely made for political gain in the race for the Democratic nomination.
“It’s a very irresponsible statement, that’s all I can say,” Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Khusheed Kasuri told AP Television News. “As the election campaign in America is heating up we would not like American candidates to fight their elections and contest elections at our expense.”
Obama has not, since that time, backed down on his threats. Instead his “soaring” rhetoric continues to talk tough INRE the Pakistanis… with just a tad of “softening”.
“What I have said is that if we had actionable intelligence against high-level al-Qaeda targets and the Pakistani Government was unwilling to go after those targets, then we should. Now my hope is that does not come to that, that, in fact, the Pakistani Government will recognise that we have Osama bin Laden in our sights, then we should fire, that we should capture,” he told CBS in an interview.
Obama who visited neighbouring Afghanistan Sunday, however, told the channel that Washington’s strategy should be that if Pakistan does not take action in the event of having actionable intelligence against high-value terror suspects, the United States should.
It appears the candidate of “hope” now merely “hopes” that he doesn’t have to order an invasion of a US ally.
Obama offered some other thinly veiled threats while next door in Afghanistan:
KABUL: United States Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama said on Sunday he would not tolerate militant sanctuaries in Pakistan, which NATO blames for the spike in violence inside eastern Afghanistan. “I will push Pakistan very hard to make sure that we act against such training camps,” he said, adding, “I think it’s absolutely vital to the security interests of both the United States and Pakistan.”
There’s at least one Pakistani official responding to Obama… and he’s not mincing his words at the prospect of a cowboy president from Chicago - one who uses the US military might against allies, and not jihad movements. NWFP Governor Owais Ghani said BHO’s irresponsible rhetoric is undermining the Islamabad government:
Any incursion into Pakistan’s mountainous northwestern tribal belt bordering Afghanistan would spark “disastrous” consequences for the whole world, he said. “Candidate Obama gave these statements. I come out openly and say such statements undermine support, don’t do it,” Ghani said.
A spate of US missile strikes in Pakistan on Al-Qaeda and Taliban hideouts in the tribal areas had also inflamed public sentiment against Islamabad’s role in the US-led “war on terror,” said Ghani, who oversees anti-militancy policies in NWFP and the adjoining Federally Administered Tribal Areas. “I think they are being shortsighted and they are being unrealistic,” said Ghani referring to Obama and other US officials. “What the allies and the world must understand is that no government, whether political or military, can remain involved in this global war on terrorism unless the majority of public sentiment backs it,” he said. “These strikes are undermining that, but even the statements are, too.”
“It would be disastrous,” Ghani said, when asked about the possibility of US action in Pakistan’s tribal belt. “It won’t do any good for anybody, not for the world, not to Afghanistan, not to Pakistan.” He warned that not only would Pakistan defend its sovereignty, but that thousands of ethnic Pashtun tribesmen along the border would rise up to expel any foreign troops. “These are fighters, let me tell you,” the governor said. “Superpowers have underestimated them, the British, the Soviets, and I hope nobody makes the same mistake again.”
Ghani said the best solution remained Pakistan’s long-standing proposal to fence the border. The root causes of the insurgency lay in Afghanistan’s political situation, heroin production and in the continuing presence of foreign troops, Ghani said, adding, however, that an Iraq-style “surge” in Afghanistan could work. “If it is accompanied by a parallel political strategy… yes,” he said. “Once it’s on that path then they can decide how to disengage.”
The governor said Pakistan’s policy of negotiations was working, although he insisted that the government was only talking to tribal elders and not to militants. “I tell our allies, ‘Look, if you have better ideas, put them on the table,’” he said.
As Scott quipped in the thread about Obama’s Willful Ignorance on Iraq:
…the idea that sending more troops to fight Al Queda in Afghanistan makes as much sense as sending more troops to Djibouti to fight Al Queda. Al Queda’s in Pakistan. If ya wanna fight em where they are….prepare to invade a nuclear armed nation that’s 3x the size of Iraq, has areas that have never been conquered in the entire history of mankind, has the worst terrain on the planet, and-oh yeah-has literally tens of millions of wannabe martyrs. Please present your Pakistani invasion plans forthwith.
His point? Until Pakistan and the US come to agreement on the way to weed out the harbored neo-Taliban and AQ there, stop them from crossing the border, you will make no headway in Afghanistan. Instead the added US troops, along side the NATO forces, will merely be on constant defense with regular skirmishes. The Pakistan/Afghanistan border is a revolving door of terrorism. There will be no progress until you slam the door shut with the majority of the bad guys on one side of the door, or the other in order to round them up.
By Obama’s trip to Afghanistan, and overt avoidance of Islamabad, he demonstrates he is clueless as to how to “win” a fight in Afghanistan. Or to put it in liberal-ese… where’s the strategy? Where’s the exit plan? Frankly, Obama’s done nothing but stir the pot with threats against the one country that is integral in the quest for Afghanistan stability. And apparently his way of getting their help is to threaten unilateral invasion.
Obama’s tough talk is not confined only to Pakistan. He has extended his criticisms also to Karzai in Afghanistan, and Maliki and the Iraqi government. Quite frankly, as a quintessential armchair CIC, he’s done nothing but bad mouth the US and allies’ efforts at every turn.
Yet his harsh words are disturbingly absent for the enemy who assails all these countries. Indeed, in his op-ed in the Hyde Park Herald Sept 19th, 2001, he paid more lip service to the terrorists, calling the attack “a failure of empathy”. (from the New York article, via LGFs)
If one looks past the youthful energy, the well delivered speeches, to the core of a potential POTUS and CIC, the vision of a President Obama should make every US citizen wary. He plans on reserving his “negotiations” for enemies (i.e. Iran, Castro and Chavez), and will send the US military do the talking to our allies. For our friends that he doesn’t invade, he’ll have the DNC Congress cut off anti-terrorist funding and reconstruction aid to Iraq and Pakistan to back up his tough talk.
If invading and criticizing friends, and yanking funding, is his idea of winning “hearts and minds”… not to mention his goal of improving the US standing in the int’l community… we are in deep trouble under an Obama administration.
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