Pakistan
On Tuesday, the Pakistan’s military ordered its forces along the Afghan border to repulse all future American military incursions into Pakistan. The story has been subsequently downplayed, and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Mike Mullen, flew to Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, to try to ease tensions. But the fact remains that American forces have and are violating Pakistani sovereignty. ~Robert Baer
What is remarkable about this is that these incursions have been administration policy for the better part of a year, and they are the recommended policy of a future Obama administration, and the conventional wisdom among both Bush and Obama supporters is that this is a brilliant idea. Trotskyites and Obamacons agree–stand up to Pakistan! By stand up, of course, they must mean fight, since that is what implementing their plan will require. What else is there to say about this view except that it is more belligerent and confrontational than the one held by John McCain? In fact, there is a good deal more to say, but we might start with the frightening truth that McCain represents the voice of reason on whether or not to launch strikes inside Pakistan. If McCain is the voice of reason, the others have pretty clearly gone mad.
Why is Pakistan taking this position now? First of all, while we should not discount the existence of dangerous elements in the ISI that continue to support the Taliban and Al Qaeda just as they support jihadis in India (including possibly the latest bombings in Delhi), Islamabad is not “giving refuge” to these forces. The Pakistani government is, however, insisting that its sovereignty be respected in the wake of the Bush administration’s egregious violations of it, and one would think that a major non-NATO ally’s sovereignty would be something that would not be taken so lightly. I am well aware of how dangerous elements of Pakistan’s government are, and I have been quite clear in my views that Pakistan has been a poor ally, but there are larger considerations here.
Partly because President Zardari is weak, and because Sharif broke up the coalition with the PPP and weakened Gilani’s government, the government has evidently felt compelled to take a stronger line on Pakistani sovereignty than Musharraf did to shore up its position. Besides, the new government has been provoked and humiliated, since Gilani was in Washington not two months ago stating that American strikes inside Pakistan without their permission were unacceptable. The main reason why Washington and much of Obama’s cheering section have had no problem with violating Pakistani sovereignty is that they seem to have assumed that there would be no hostile reaction on the part of the Pakistani government. Musharraf was eager to show his patrons in Washington that he was cooperating–or at least that he was not stopping U.S. forces from operating inside Pakistan–in order to give the administration some reason to keep backing him, so I suppose many people were misled into thinking that what an enormously unpopular dictator would allow our forces to do would also be permitted by an elected government. This is clearly wrong, and the situation now requires much more than tete-a-tetes between Mullen and Kayani.
It requires reconsidering what U.S. interests dictate, and it seems fairly clear that they do not dictate entering into open conflict with the Pakistani military. Were our forces to engage Pakistan’s military, the consequences would be dire for the cohesion of the country, which is indeed every bit as artificial and unstable as Iraq, and for regional stability. Let’s be very clear about this: if we stir up Pakistan against our presence in that part of the world, we will end up losing whatever gains we have made in Afghanistan and will turn one of the largest Muslim states in the world, and the only one with nuclear weapons, from an unreliable ally to an open enemy. Remember the Pakistani boy Andrew thought would look at Obama’s face and be overwhelmed by American soft power? If Obama follows through on the war policy that he would now have to endorse to continue launching raids into Pakistan, that boy will see Obama’s face as the face of the enemy and will react accordingly.
It is telling that it was mostly opponents of the invasion of Iraq who saw Pakistan for what it was years ago, understanding that it sponsored terrorism against India, engaged in nuclear proliferation and had been exploiting the military aid we provided to build up its forces on the border with India. The warmongers, Hitchens included, were indifferent to Pakistan then, preferring instead to back a war against a government that had no ties to Al Qaeda and had no weapons programs. Having plunged into that war for no reason, they are now quick to discover what we have known all along, and, of course, their solution is always escalation.
From Hitchen’s essay:
“American liberals can’t quite face the fact that if their man does win in November, and if he has meant a single serious word he’s ever said, it means more war, and more bitter and protracted war at that—not less.”
Let’s take the fight to an unstable, nuclear-armed nation of 170 million people! God help us all. Let’s all cross our fingers and hope and pray that Obama has been lying through his teeth about this.
What I will never entirely understand is how, in the wake of the Iraq debacle (and in the midst of continuing to bog down the bulk of our land forces in Iraq), Obama supporters can believe that it makes sense to precipitate a much larger conflict with a much better-armed, more populous country. Obviously, stupidity factors into it somewhere, but there are also plenty of intelligent Obama supporters who will cheer his position on this. It can’t even be put down to reflexive anti-Bush sentiment anymore, since Obama and Bush hold the same position.
I was breathing a sign of relief that Iran war mongering rhetoric has been little to non existent since the Russian-Georgia debacle. And now I read this – what a shame. I hope, just hope, someone sane would say, “maybe escalation in such a dangerous region is a bad idea” like the murmurs of dissidence when the administration started the war mongering talk in regards to Iran. But I imagine that we would have no such luck this time.
In spite of how Obama’s words can be interpreted, he’s not going to invade Pakistan on a whim. If we need to go into Pakistan to get non Paki’s for whatever reason, he’ll get cooperation. We know this. He”s a democrat.
If we can’t take McCain’s ‘bombbombbombbombbomb Iran’ or ’100 years in Iraq’ comments seriously why should we treat Obama’s as gospel? They both will behave differently than their rhetoric suggsts.
Just my opinion of course but I don’t see any reason to fret that Obama will start invade a nuclear country.
Forgive me if I’m missing something, but when has Obama called for regular raids into Pakistan? As I recall, the sole basis for this claim is Obama’s positive answer to question of whether, if he knew through intelligence with total certainty where Osama Bin Laden or other top al Qaeda leaders were in Pakistnan, and the Pakistani government refused to cooperate, would he send our miltiary in after them anyway? Answering yes to this in no way indicates a willingness to send troops over the border into Pakistan in any kind of regular raiding operations against ordinary Taliban soldiers. So maybe there’s some other statements of Obama’s that I’m not aware of that indicate he wants to do this kind of thing. If not, it’s a pretty thin stretch and even a bald-faced distortion of his views on the matter to suggest that he wants to start a regular invasion of Pakistan to go after al Qaeda, much less an actual war with Pakistan itself. I’m open to being persuaded if there’s anything to back this up out there. So please, fill in the blanks.
Two points. You are right that Obama and those in favour of his mooted policy did not assume that Musharraf would retaliate. It must be noted in the same breath, however, that they had no foreknowledge of Musharraf’s demise and replacement by Zardari.
Should they refuse entirely to revise the policy in the event of Zardari’s election, your grounds for criticism would be solid.
Also, Mr Larison, it is no one’s intention that once the new Pakistani government has shown its determination to retaliate, America should continue unswervingly in the policy of incursion, even to the likely point of war with Pakistan, and the precipitation of regionwide havoc that would follow.
If it is Obama’s policy to strike the terrorists who attacked us eight years ago (and who knows whether the intelligence that spurred Bush to make these incursions would have constituted for Obama sufficient evidence to act on -his- policy, which is after all not Bush’s?), I would hope this indicates it is also his practice to learn from and to respond to experience. The selfconsciously macho unwillingness to do so is one lineament of the first three quarters of Bush’s rule. It is the opinion of many of us who support Obama that his stated policies and his record suggest he represents a rational break from the tunnelbound idealism of Bush.
No more than would McCain or Bush, Obama would not go to war with Pakistan, even for the sake of Bin Laden’s scalp. You are right that Pakistan’s aggression in defence shows the foolishness of the original policy only if that policy is construed as immutable as its context mutates. You are right that the original polcy was foolish only in the extent that it failed to recognise the probability of Musharraf’s fall.
I believe conradg is right. What the Bush administration has been doing in Pakistan these last few weeks is not the same thing as what Obama said would be his policy. And Bush signed an order in July authorizing American troops to conduct ground operations in Pakistan. I have yet to see any reports that any high value targets have been taken out in Pakistan during these raids, or that America had intelligence Pakistan refused to act on concerning a high value target.