On my drive to work today I was listening to NPR and they mentioned that the Obama campaign released parts of his speech that he’d deliver if elected in 2008. He said that he would strike al Qaeda targets in Pakistan with or without the approval of the Pakistani government. He also threated to cut the hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid to Pakistan.
(I would like to mention that I do like Barack Obama. If I had to pick a Democrat that I wanted to be President it would most likely be him.)
I can, however, understand where Obama’s tough stance is coming from. We all know that al Qaeda and Taliban are hiding in areas of Pakistan and that President Pervez Musharraf has been unable (or unwilling?) to stop the rise of the insurgency. If the Bush Administration would have focused on Afghanistan instead of leading us into Iraq we probably wouldn’t be seeing such a rise in Pakistan.
“If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will,” Obama said.
He also said, “I would make our conditions clear: Pakistan must make substantial progress in closing down the training camps, evicting foreign fighters, and preventing the Taliban from using Pakistan as a staging area for attacks in Afghanistan.”
I’m severely torn on how I feel about his statements. One could argue if we weren’t in the Middle East in the first place that we wouldn’t have to worry about people hiding in Pakistan and plotting against us (Non-intervention.. Ron Paul 2008). If we were to move into Pakistan it would most likely heighten the tensions between us the the Middle East even more. On the other hand, what type of risk are we getting ourselves into if we just sit on our hands and do nothing? I think that before we rush into Pakistan that we push hard diplomatically and see if we can get Musharraf to take matters into his own hands. I think that threatening to remove hundreds of millions of dollars might light a fire under him. The Bush Administration has been way too easy on Musharraf in my opinion.
And that is the whole problem in a nutshell. Bush has been waging the wrong war. He took his eye off the ball when he went after Saddam. I could go on and on, but what’s the point. ITMFN!
Testing for Ajax commenting ..