McCain Must Press Obama on Attacking Pakistan

With the fall of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, the US is scrambling to build a relationship with the new ruling Pakistani parties.

This will be a challenge for whomever wins the presidency in November. This would be a particularly difficult challenge for a foreign policy neophyte like Barack Obama.

In a debate last year, Hillary Clinton schooled Barack Obama on his "naive" foreign policy where Obama stated he would, without precondition meet with evil dictators around the world. See video of CNN Democratic debate. "I thought that was irresponsible and frankly naive," said Clinton. In an effort to sound tough, Obama responded later with a an aggessive foreign policy for someone who is building his foreign policy around multilateralism. Obama's policy sounds like it came straight from the desk of Vice President Dick Cheney.

Obama said if elected in November 2008 he would be willing to attack inside Pakistan with or without approval from the Pakistani government, a move that would likely cause anxiety in the already troubled region.                       

This statement was purely political and much like his NAFTA flip-flop was probably only meant for US consumption. Unlike his wavering stance on NAFTA and Canada, Obama's campaign staff probably didn't call up Islamabad to give them a heads up that he was about to, in more than just the sense of the word, drop a bomb on their heads.

This statement is contradictory to Obama's stated foreign policy that he would act to build international support.

The United States is trapped by the Bush-Cheney approach to diplomacy that refuses to talk to leaders we don't like. Not talking doesn't make us look tough – it makes us look arrogant, it denies us opportunities to make progress, and it makes it harder for America to rally international support for our leadership. On challenges ranging from terrorism to disease, nuclear weapons to climate change, we cannot make progress unless we can draw on strong international support.

And in Obama's defense he said he wasn't going to invade Pakistan, like some have claimed, but he did say he would strike at al Qaeda targets within Pakistan.

"With respect to Pakistan, I never said I would bomb Pakistan. What I said was that if we have actionable intelligence against [Osama] Bin Laden or other key Al Qaeda officials and we – and Pakistan is unwilling or unable to strike against them, we should.

Trying to split the hairs between bombing Pakistan and striking al Qaeda targets in Pakistan is very thin. Either way you are dropping bombs on Pakistan not that Obama is incorrect about this policy, he continues, "And just several days ago, in fact, this administration did exactly that."

So he admits that he would continue George Bush's policy in regards to al Qaeda in Pakistan. The problem is he shouldn't try to play both sides of the aisle. Obama is not to be trusted if he is going to try to please everyone. If he came out with a clear policy without nuances, Americans could start to believe what Obama is saying. It seems Obama wants/needs to be liked/loved by everyone. When you do that, you alienate everyone, because no one believes anything you say anymore.

The question that Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain should ask is, what strong international support does Obama have to unilaterally attack al Qaeda targets within Pakistan with or without the Pakistani government's approval? I imagine a lot less than what George W. Bush had when invading Iraq. Although it was a smaller coalition than the first Gulf war, the Iraq War had over three dozen countries supporting the coalition. Although I'm not sure I want Hillary Clinton answering the phone at three am, I surely don't want Obama fumbling his way through foreign policy 101 at three am.

The conclusion we have to draw from this contradiction is that Barack Obama still knows very little about foreign affairs and how diplomacy works with other instruments of power.