Obama - Attack Pakistan

[red states rule]

It seems liobs are always opposed to the war on terror - but they support their own individual wars


Obama warns Pakistan on terror
By Brian DeBose
August 2, 2007

Sen. Barack Obama yesterday said he would send U.S. troops into Pakistan if President Pervez Musharraf fails to more aggressively hunt down and eliminate al Qaeda strongholds and terrorist training camps there.

"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," said Mr. Obama, setting benchmarks on millions of dollars in future military aid to Pakistan.

The Illinois Democrat acknowledged the military and political difficulties of such an effort in the "wind-swept deserts and cave-dotted mountains." He said it would be difficult to convince nomadic tribes living there with few ties to the Musharraf regime or any government that the U.S. is not there to occupy their lands.

"It's a tough place. But that is no excuse," Mr. Obama said.

The Bush administration says its approach is working and is the most responsible way of dealing with a country that could be an election away from becoming an Islamic fundamentalist state.

"Our approach to Pakistan is one that not only respects the sovereignty of Pakistan as a sovereign government, but is also designed to work in a way where we are working in cooperation with the local government," said White House press secretary Tony Snow, citing the capture of September 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed as an example of the two countries working together to combat al Qaeda.

During the broad 35-minute counterterrorism policy speech, Mr. Obama reiterated his commitment to engage enemy state leaders in open-ended diplomatic talks, continuing his brush with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, New York Democrat.

"It's time to turn the page on Washington's conventional wisdom that agreement must be reached before you meet," Mr. Obama said.

http://washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070802/NATION/108020080/1001

[red states rule]

Obama's Foreign Vision Is Exciting -- And Also Naive
By Mort Kondracke

The foreign policy offered by Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is bold, idealistic, muscular, expansive, Kennedy-esque.

It also is, as his Democratic rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) charges, naive and irresponsible. It sounds like the vision of a freshman Senator. Or, possibly, a Texas governor with no foreign policy experience.

Obama promises that, as president, he will do it all -- visit on an unconditional basis with five of the world's worst dictators in his first year; get out of Iraq and fight harder in Afghanistan and, maybe, Pakistan; rebuild old U.S. alliances and establish new ones; and double U.S. foreign aid and improve U.S. intelligence-gathering while abandoning nasty means like warrantless wiretapping.

He will "not hesitate to use force, unilaterally if necessary, to protect the American people or our vital interests whenever we are attacked or imminently threatened." And he also would use force "beyond self-defense ... to support friends, participate in stability and reconstruction operations or confront mass atrocities."

And that's not all. He also will get control of the world's loose nukes, reach out to the Muslim world in his first 100 days, close down Guantanamo Bay and give full constitutional rights to enemy combatants, rally the world to address global climate change, and kill and capture terrorists anywhere on the globe, but never, ever kidnap or torture any.

Of course, it's perfectly legitimate for a presidential candidate to lay down a broad foreign policy vision, as Obama did in his terrorism speech Wednesday and in a Foreign Affairs article earlier this year.

But completely missing from Obama's breathtaking agenda is any sense of priorities, limits, difficulties -- or humility. His pronouncements exude hubris and inexperience.

Obama cannot speak or write without excoriating President Bush. His deepest dig on Wednesday was "because of a war in Iraq that should never have been authorized and should never have been waged, we are now less safe than we were before 9/11."

Besides being untrue -- most Americans hardly knew there was an al-Qaida threat before Sept. 11, 2001 -- his unremitting criticism of Bush will make it difficult for Obama to do what he says he wants to: reunite the nation behind difficult common purposes.

He accused Clinton, in their testy exchanges after the July 24 CNN-YouTube debate, of pursuing a foreign policy that is "Bush lite." In fact, it's Obama who most recalls Bush, notably his overambitious, we-can-implant-democracy-anywhere 2004 inaugural address.

Clinton, by contrast, conveyed a sense -- well-earned -- of having been around the Oval Office when hard choices had to be made. She had to know from her husband's bitter experience convening a last-ditch Mideast summit at Camp David in 2000 that it's dangerous for a president to undertake personal diplomacy "without preconditions."

Any Democratic president -- and any smart Republican, too -- will abandon Bush's first term policy of non-negotiation with adversaries. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in fact, has abandoned it already.

But Obama seems to think it would be useful to, as he said, "sit down with" Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and "send a strong message that Israel is our friend, that we will assist in their security and that we won't find nuclear weapons acceptable."

That intention recalls President John F. Kennedy's 1961 effort in Vienna to convince Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev that capitalism was superior to communism, which resulted in a summit disaster, an intensified Cold War and, perhaps, the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Obama and his advisers argue that President Ronald Reagan met with Mikhail Gorbachev despite calling the Soviet Union an "evil empire." But Reagan's first summit was in 1985, nearly five years after he took office and after he had acquired the leverage of the Star Wars program and Pershing II missiles in Europe.

Another flaw in Obama's inveterate Bush-bashing -- Clinton's, too -- is that they set themselves up to make a key Bush-like error. On taking office, Bush rejected everything Clintonian -- including Bill Clinton's concern about terrorism -- leading to disastrous consequences.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, in an earlier debate, at least had the grace to say that America "is safer than it was before 9/11, although not as safe as it should be."

The good news in Obama's terrorism speech yesterday was that he actually shares Bush's sense of the menace presented by global terrorism. "Just because the president misrepresents our enemies does not mean that we don't have them," he said, and promised to "wage the war that has to be won."

The most arresting item in the speech was his vow that "if we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets [in Pakistan] and President [Pervez] Musharraf won't act, we will."

That's bold, but also possibly destabilizing for Pakistan. And why, by the same logic, would Obama not be willing to bomb factories in Iran that produce explosively formed projectiles used against U.S. troops in Iraq, or send commandos in to attack terrorist base camps in Syria?

He might, but I doubt it. Why? Because that would be in support of the Iraq War, which Obama (and Clinton) want to get out of. Even though al-Qaida's No. 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, says that Iraq is "the place of greatest struggle" against the U.S., Democrats want to abandon it and move to what they think will be an easier conflict in Afghanistan.

It may not be so easy, as the British and the Soviets discovered. And it may be even harder if they leave behind a regional calamity in Iraq. Obama says he would withdraw "carefully," but he wants no combat forces left by March 31, 2008. Who will fight al-Qaida in Iraq after that?

There are many attractive ideas in Obama's agenda, including a new language-savvy Americas Voice Corps to work in the Muslim world and programs to fight poverty and ignorance. Obama wants America to be "the relentless opponent of terror and tyranny and the light of hope to the world."

It all echoes John F. Kennedy -- "we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe" -- and Obama clearly means to be the torchbearer for a new generation. But America also needs a president with the experience to avoid a Bay of Pigs, a Vietnam or an Iraq War.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/08/obamas_foreign_vision_is_excit.html

[red states rule]

This could be used in some ads for Sen Obama

[red states rule]

It will be interesting to see how the left spins this

I noticed AP news only provided a small report on this speech, "Obama vows to hunt down terrorists," which was only carried by a few minor media outlets. That alone tells you it was bad news for Obama.

[PostmodernProphet]

That alone tells you it was bad news for Obama

it certainly is bad news for someone trying to get the Democratic nomination.....there might at least be some encouragement in seeing that someone from the left who might end up as president at least has enough brains to realize it might be necessary to act in Pakistan....

[red states rule]

it certainly is bad news for someone trying to get the Democratic nomination.....there might at least be some encouragement in seeing that someone from the left who might end up as president at least has enough brains to realize it might be necessary to act in Pakistan....

It shows the double standards of the Dems

If it were not for the double standards they would have no standards at all

[avatar4321]

Thankfully Obama will never be President.

What is it with Democrats? "Let's threaten our allies and talk with our enemies" um hello?

[red states rule]

Thankfully Obama will never be President.

What is it with Democrats? "Let's threaten our allies and talk with our enemies" um hello?

Knowing Obama will not be President is the one positive thing about this story

Libs have a long history of appeasing evil

[red states rule]

Obama's sword
Mona Charen
August 6, 2007

Within the last several weeks, Democratic presidential aspirant Barack Obama has announced he would meet with America's enemies and attack America's friends. Those interested in a dramatic departure from Bush-Cheney need look no further.

Asked whether he would — without preconditions — meet with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea, the Illinois senator declared he would. He added, "I think it's a disgrace that we have not spoken to them." (Actually, the U.S. has had diplomatic contact with all of those nations, just not at the presidential level.)

A week later, in a major foreign policy address, Mr. Obama scolded the leader of Pakistan and warned, "I understand that President Musharraf has his own challenges. But let me make this clear. There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again.... If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf will not act, we will."

To be fair to Mr. Obama, there is no doubt that Pakistan is a terror haven and a flimsy ally. But Pakistan's very precariousness in this struggle — to say nothing of its nuclear arsenal — argues for particular finesse and restraint, one would think.

What is it about American allies that Democrats seem to find so offensive? When Jimmy Carter was president, he inaugurated a foreign policy ostentatiously based on respect for "human rights." Yet the principal targets of his human rights crusade were American allies like the shah of Iran, while traditional enemies like the Soviet Union and Cuba escaped whipping. That turned out well, didn't it?

We've heard endlessly about America's blunder in supporting the mujahideen in Afghanistan during the war against the Soviet occupation. The unintended consequence was to strengthen the Islamists. Fair enough. Few foresaw that our allies in defeating the communists would then turn against us. But what of Jimmy Carter's abandonment of the shah? No foresight was required. Even in 1979, it was clear the only beneficiaries of a revolution in Iran would be either the leftists or the Islamists. If the mullahs had not seized control of Iran in 1979, the world would be a far, far less dangerous place today.

Mr. Obama rattles his saber at Pakistan, yet sponsored a resolution calling for withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Iraq by March 2008. In this, Mr. Obama speaks for the majority of Democrats. The Democrats' delusion is that we can win the war on terror (perhaps by lobbing some cruise missiles into the mountains of Pakistan) while losing the war in Iraq. The al Qaeda leadership must welcome this emphasis.

Bin Laden's No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri, has called Iraq "the place for the greatest battle of Islam in this era." al-Zawahri probably wouldn't mind a few cruise missiles headed into Pakistan in exchange for a thorough humiliation of America in Iraq. A defeat for the United States and Britain in Iraq would be the greatest boon possible for the Islamist cause.

for the complete article

http://www.washingtontimes.com/article/20070806/COMMENTARY/108060023/1012

[red states rule]

Libs are trying to side with both Obama and Hillary...

Rock Star' Obama in Harmony With U.S. Allies: Albert R. Hunt

By Albert R. Hunt

Aug. 6 (Bloomberg) -- The first major dustup between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton -- whether the next president should unconditionally meet with leaders hostile to the U.S. -- is still simmering after two weeks.

How the issue will play in the American presidential election remains uncertain. How the rest of the world is reacting is not. Obama wins.

It isn't so much the particulars of this rather contrived controversy: The lawmaker from Illinois, responding to a question at a televised debate, said that as president he would meet, without preconditions, with the bad guys -- the Iranians, Syrians, North Koreans, Cubans or Venezuelans.

Clinton disagreed and, flexing her experience muscles, said afterward that Obama's response was ``irresponsible and frankly naive.''

Those words sound as if they could have come from President George W. Bush or Vice President Dick Cheney -- an unpopular view in much of the world.

Any doubters about world opinion should look at this year's Pew Research Center global attitudes survey of 45,000 people in 47 nations. Anti-Americanism has worsened in the past five years; there is an especially pervasive disapproval of American foreign policy and widespread opposition to Bush.

``The biggest complaint is that we conduct foreign policy unilaterally,'' says Andy Kohut, who directs the survey. ``Iraq is the poster child for those views.''

`Against the World'

Anti-Americanism isn't new. In a 2006 book he co-wrote -- ``America Against the World'' -- Kohut notes that in 1842 Charles Dickens found Americans ``rude, addicted to sharp business practices, hypocritical about liberty in light of their treatment of blacks, and careless about where they spit tobacco.'' In 1958, a celebrated book was entitled ``The Ugly American.''

When the Soviet Union collapsed, American hegemony as the world's only superpower generated resentment around the world.

There are bright spots in the Pew survey. People in India, Japan, South Korea and throughout Africa have a favorable sense of the U.S.

Yet overall, negative sentiments have deepened significantly in the Bush years. By huge majorities, predominantly Muslim countries, including Indonesia and Malaysia, have a negative view of the U.S. So do most people in Latin America and Western Europe.

The neo-conservatives who drove the Bush foreign policy were contemptuous of what they regarded as former President Bill Clinton's obsession with being popular in other countries. They also admirably pushed a pro-democracy agenda.

Colliding Views

The two views collided as the axis of Cheney, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, failed to appreciate that public opinion can't be easily manipulated and democratically elected leaders can't ignore the consent of the governed.

The best illustration is Turkey. This used to be the neo- cons' favorite Muslim country, tough-minded and realistic. Thus, top American officials assumed Turkey would be a U.S. ally in overthrowing Saddam Hussein. They were stunned in 2003 when the Turks wouldn't let Americans use their country as a staging platform for the Iraq invasion.

They shouldn't have been. Kohut says the overwhelming majority of Turks opposed the American military action. Today, Turks have an unfavorable view of the U.S. by a margin of 83 percent to 9 percent. Seven years ago, a majority in that country had a favorable opinion.

Beyond Security

The anti-American sentiments extend beyond security and military issues. There are widespread complaints about the U.S. posture on the environment, a growing concern to people in most countries.

This is part of the generic complaint that American leaders simply don't care what others think. It's not limited to Islamic countries or Europeans; 83 percent of Canadians say America ignores their interests, and majorities among U.S. allies such as Japan and South Korea say the same.

As a result, the Bush administration's promotion of democracy and democratic values -- something the president genuinely believes in -- is viewed suspiciously; majorities in most countries say they dislike American notions about democracy.

Undoubtedly, the Iraq misadventure and problems such as the mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in Iraq and Guantanamo are a driving force behind much of the anti-Americanism. Support around the world for the U.S. ``war on terrorism'' has plummeted, and majorities in 43 of 47 countries say the U.S. should pull out of Iraq ``as soon as possible.''

`Rock Star Appeal'

Some foreign policy experts, such as Dick Holbrooke, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations during the Clinton administration, say global hostility is directed more at Bush's policies than at Americans and can be rectified by the next president. Holbrooke argues that the two leading Democratic presidential contenders, Hillary Clinton -- who he's advising -- and Obama have ``rock star appeal'' around the globe.

``The rest of the world is looking to the U.S. for leadership,'' Holbrooke says. ``There is a chance to fix these problems if the next president disengages from the inherited contamination: Iraq, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and the `my way or the highway' style.''

Yet ``my way or the highway'' is what Clinton conveyed in her initial response to Obama. Her campaign piled on because that's what the take-no-prisoners mindset requires. The senator from New York's response, however, wasn't scripted and was a rare mistake by a tired candidate.

Moreover, on the substance, her attitude seems small.

All About Chavez?

Almost every political figure outside the Bush administration -- and certainly including Hillary Clinton -- says we should be talking to the Iranians and Syrians about the Iraq quagmire. North Korea, as Clinton has noted, developed nuclear weapons on Bush's watch, so as erratic as Kim Jong-il may be, it's hard to argue that talking to him is irresponsible. Fidel Castro is in his last throes. So the whole debate is over meeting with nutty Hugo Chavez?

Initially, this fight was incorrectly seen as ideological, says David Axelrod, Obama's chief strategist. A week later, Obama suggested he'd be prepared to bomb al-Qaeda targets in Pakistan.

``The distinctions here are between conventional thinking and breaking away,'' Axelrod says.

That's why the sometimes confrontation-averse Obama relishes this encounter.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a.5OI1geizwA