Obama Sticks to his Guns
Senator Obama still can't see why it is controversial for him to threaten to violate Pakistan's sovereignty to get at the Arab al-Qaeda in Waziristan.
His comments of last week roiled US-Pakistani relations.
What he should be saying is that if he had an opportunity to deploy a Predator against Bin Laden he would do it, and that he is sure that Gen. Musharraf would cooperate. He is setting up an unlikely hypothetical, and in the hypothetical he is setting up an ally as essentially an enemy (implying that Musharraf is covering for Bin Laden or something).
His remarks suggested that he is attached to the Bush Doctrine of unilateral and preemptive military action, which violates the United Nations Charter. In the Republican debate, the candidate that sounded closest to Obama's stance on this was Rudy Giuliani. That should tell you something.
And he is angering the Pakistani public for no good reason. (I mean, if Musharraf, whom al-Qaeda has twice tried to kill with bombs, can't find them, how likely is it that Obama can?) His remarks are remarkably flat-footed for someone who has read the history of British colonialism in Kenya; isn't this just a variant of the White Man's Burden, a way of saying that the Wily Oriental Gentlemen aren't up to it?
Labels: Pakistan
posted by Juan Cole @ 8/06/2007 12:10:00 AM
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The boot is on the other foot in Turkey of course.
Ellen Knickmeyer reports Government and Army agreed on moving south.
Display the Horsetails!
And he saith, "Break up the mountains where the hermit-folk can hide,
And sift the red and silver sands lest bone of saint abide,
And chase the Giaours flying night and day, not giving rest,
For that which was our trouble comes again out of the west.
We have set the seal of Solomon on all things under sun,
Of knowledge and of sorrow and endurance of things done.
But a noise is in the mountains, in the mountains, and I know
The voice that shook our palaces--four hundred years ago:
While we can debate the wisdom of it, an attack directly on bin Laden or Zawahiri would not be "unilateral" or "preemptive".
Musharraf does not control western Pakistan; he's not up to it.
Obama's difficulty is shared by just about all the American political elite: they do not appreciate the Rule of Law, at least in the international field.
This is very similar to the Iraqi death squads. Both Sunnis and Shi'as refuse to accept that the killings are murder, saying that a man of religion must approve them before they are carried out! The Americans too will tell you that they take the killings “seriously” but are similarly ignorant of the fact that anyone can justify anything if there are no laws or rules.
An alternative (and admittedly depressingly cynical, but hey, this is US politics) way of looking at this is that Obama's strategists may feel he needs to be seen to be particularly 'tough on terror' (which in a US media context basically means generating Muslim rage rather than having any meaningful plan) since should he win the nomination he is highly likely to be covertly/directly smeared by Republicans as an Islamic fundamentalist in disguise come election day...
Of course, this would not be a good strategy, since the Republicans will do this anyway.
Sorry, but are we really going to pretend Westphalian sovereignty is sacrosanct anymore? Or that there isn't more than enough justification for pursuing an international war criminal and mass murderer into Pakistan?
The Bush Doctrine, properly adhered to, would say we should attack Pakistan as a co-conspirator for offering terrorists a safe haven in Waziristan. All Obama said is that we reserve the right to stage an incursion in Pakistan for the purpose of apprehending al Qaeda command and control.
And, as others have pointed out, targeting al Qaeda and Taliban forces is certainly not preemptive by any stretch of the imagination. If anything it would be retalitory.
Let's be very specific. Imagine that our spy satellites or spies identify Osama having a cup of tea in a tent on a plain in Pakistan. Should we launch a missile at him? Of course. Who can disagree? Should we phone the current head of state of Pakistan beforehand? Maybe to give him 10 minutes notice at the most; but not 20 because then he'd probably warn Osama to run away.
Whatever happened to an eye for an eye? There must be some point at which we can say that our need for 9/11 revenge is satiated. As a direct result of our retaliation initiatives in Iraq and Afghanistan, hundreds of thousand of innocents have died, millions have been uprooted, health care and living standards for millions have nose dived, and the prospect for peace in these two countries is nowhere to be seen.
So along comes Obama, a new face with new ideas and a full intellect. But he's all for more of the same. Hit those tribal areas, spread the violence a little farther, kill a few more innocents. Of course it's prudent to have "actionable intelligence", a military term of art meaning "maybe here, maybe now, maybe soon, maybe....". before we kill a few dozen, maybe a few hundred, Tribal Area residents. Would Obama shed a tear for these lives lost? Or would he jut his chin out and take the very popular view that they died for the cause of anti-terrorism? Is he saying that CHENEYbush's doctrine of limited sovereignty, applied to any country we think might cause us a problem, is fine with him?
We need a candidate who is willing to fall on his or her sword, i.e. forgoes a chance of winning, and make a strong argument that terrorism is a miniscule problem for the United States and the rest of the world. Miniscule compared to hunger, starvation, disease, crime, political brutality, global warming, uniformed warfare, to name a few. Right now we are unable to deal with substantial problems because a lot of us are convinced that terrorism is the greatest threat to our security and well being. That candidate might start by pointing out that since 9/11 we've had about 100,000 murders, half a million forcible rapes, well over two million robberies, about five million aggravated assaults, and about eight million vehicle thefts.
There are so many people in the world to that have a viceral hatred for the US, that for all practical purposes bin Ladin can put his operation on automatic pilot. Terrorist incidents will continue to occur, but so will all the other problems mentioned, and on a much larger scale.
"stage an incursion"
I think that, at this point, all Americans should ask some serious questions about the scale, length, and exit strategy before "staging an incursion" into any more Islamic countries.
After all, the Iraq quagmire was sold to us as just "staging an incursion". Clean as a whistle. Be home in no time.
Color me skeptical about the realities of an armed intervention into the tribal regions of Pakistan. If Rumsfeld and Cheney wouldn't do it, that ought to be enough to give us pause.
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