Sep 10th, 2008 at 10:03 pm
Naive and Irresponsible
NYT: “Bush Said to Give Orders Allowing Raids in Pakistan”
I look forward to John McCain’s condemnation of this policy, much as he condemned Barack Obama for saying this is what we should do. Perhaps he’d like to take the opportunity to for once put some substantive daylight between himself and the Bush administration.
38 Responses to “Naive and Irresponsible”
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September 10th, 2008 at 10:26 pm
do you think the war hero can dredge up some consistency in his positions? or is he too busy ginning up faux outrage?
and, the presidency’s not a purple heart or medal of honor. by using it as a campaign prop, mccain’s dishonored his military service.
no honor; no decency.
September 10th, 2008 at 10:40 pm
When Bush takes Obama’s positions it weakens the argument that Obama has bad judgment, but we’re seeing it also take those positions off the table.
McCain isn’t losing points for advocating an extended occupation now that Bush has accepted that Iraq can and will ask the US to leave approximately on Obama’s schedule.
Bush adopting Obama’s position here takes pressure off of McCain.
The United States is really not going to be conducting many operations in Pakistan though. Pakistan can have the US lose Afghanistan as easily or more easily than Iran can cause the US to lose Iraq.
Notwithstanding the recent US acknowledged strike on Pakistani soil, the US will not be able to make a habit of that and will go back to officially and for the most part actually restricting its attacks to Afghanistan.
September 10th, 2008 at 10:43 pm
John won’t remember saying that; got to wonder if he even knows what his campaign is out there doing these days. Oh hell, put some lipstick on it…..what does Sarah think?
September 10th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
Obama and Biden HAVE to raise this point in the debates if they don’t want the win-the-point-lose-the-crowd situations in which Kerry and Gore found themselves. Obama has been vindicated on at least two major strategic questions, and he should not let the “war and experience” candidate weasel out of the judgement argument.
September 10th, 2008 at 11:01 pm
There’s a distinction between quick raids and an invasion, which is what it would take to really clean out that area. Also, the situation has deteriorated badly since the Bhutto assassination, as ably described by Dexter Filkin’s article in last Sunday’s NYT. The Pakistani army can no longer be considered an ally, by any measure, and the new president is corrupt and mentally unstable.
Pakistan has become as problematic as Iran, and there is no good solution in sight. Eventually, the Pakistani army will arrest the politicians, but that will just put us back to where we’ve been. God help us if their nukes fall under the control of jihadists.
September 10th, 2008 at 11:02 pm
The talk radio gasbags who attacked Obama for wanting to “invade an ally” - and here I’m thinking of Hannity and Mark Levin - will have to do backflips on this one.
September 10th, 2008 at 11:15 pm
where is biden?
if he cannot play the attack dog at least he can be a staunch defender.
September 10th, 2008 at 11:19 pm
There’s a distinction between quick raids and an invasion, which is what it would take to really clean out that area.
What he said was: “If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will,”
At the time I was pretty damn shocked that McCain/Clinton and all the rest pretended that wasn’t standard U.S. policy since 1998 or so. I’m an America hating, evil, angry leftist and I can’t manage to get worked up about that. There are ways I can see a certain amount of hypocrisy in it. I can see how granting a sort of American exceptionalism to territorial sovereignty can create all sorts of bad fallout when other countries follow suit.
What I can’t see is how you can be a McCain supporter and just barf this sort of bullshit out. What makes it even more delicious, is you probably hate the guy. You probably even know you are peddling bullshit to get him elected.
My only theory is that a theoretically, “Pro-American” dictator just naturally warms conservative hearts through cold-war inertia. You had to peddle a bunch of bullshit back then and it’s just become a dog-whistle for you to react to. Generic “Pro-American” dictator is worth any price. If you have Bin Ladin throwing up his middle finger on a satellite somewhere out in the border region of Pakistan, and if Musharraf says “I’m not going there” Musharraf wins because it’s all a big risk game and you are going to put a bunch of armies there next turn to invade China.
September 10th, 2008 at 11:39 pm
I heard the explanation on NPR the other day. Obama’s answer was naive and irresponsible because it was something he shouldn’t say, even if it is something the president should do.
Or something like that.
September 11th, 2008 at 12:27 am
The Swift Boat Media for McCain would never be so impolite as to ask their candidate to comment on substantive issues. They’re far more interested in how they can help him by amplifying manufactured outrage over some out-of-context comment about lipstick.
September 11th, 2008 at 12:33 am
It’s about diplomacy. We must attack the AQ and Taliban in Pakistan, and we have at least the tacit support of the Pakistani government, but we don’t want to stir up anti-American sentiment among the people. Reckless statements by politicians can only aggravate a sensitive situation. The last thing we want to do is to play into the hands of the jihadists.
September 11th, 2008 at 12:47 am
Reckless statements by politicians can only aggravate a sensitive situation. The last thing we want to do is to play into the hands of the jihadists.
I’m laughing my ass off at you. John McCain’s main care in life is acting like any foreign policy matter that comes up is the most *serious* thing that ever happened and maximum belligerence is the only way forward out of whatever. McCain wants some sort of Great Power conflict over nowhereland in maybe-Georgia, but he’s afraid of bombing Bin Ladin in the rump of Pakistan because it’s sensitive? Really? Really?
September 11th, 2008 at 1:01 am
I have to disagree with Arnold Evans here. I believe the neocons are ginning up a war WITH Pakistan - not just IN Pakistan.
The recent actions of the US military are so incredibly stupid that there can be only one explanation - a deliberate intention to aggravate Pakistan into becoming the enemy.
The Pentagon has now acknowledged that their strategy in Afghanistan is not working. Well, duh! So what is their only solution? To paraphrase Obama, “take the fight to Pakistan”.
That is a recipe for major disaster - but it’s also the recipe for massive war profits for the military-industrial complex. And that’s all that matters to these people.
I predict we will be at war with Pakistan AND Iran within the next five years, if not the next two. I expect the war on Iran to begin this year - unless the Pakistan war proves to be a juicier target for the war profiteers running this country.
You have to remember that, other than the grunts actually on the ground, none of these wars are costing the people behind the lines anything at all. It hasn’t hurt Bush, Cheney, the neocons, the war profiteers, the oil companies, nobody except the taxpayers, the soldiers and the dead civilians.
So where is there any incentive to prevent any more wars? The people behind this country aren’t going to attack Russia or China because they can deliver nukes directly to the US. Everybody else is just another way to make money.
We’re heading for war with Pakistan.
September 11th, 2008 at 1:05 am
John McCain is truly deeply and irremediably evil.
September 11th, 2008 at 1:11 am
That is a recipe for major disaster - but it’s also the recipe for massive war profits for the military-industrial complex.
Errr, no it’s not. MIC want’s to see both India and Pakistan procuring arms from the U.S (hopefully with the federal government acting as guarantor). An actual invasion of Pakistan would really fuck things up for that sector of the economy. If the thing didn’t dissolve instantly into a nuclear holocaust in South Asia (which is what would most likely happen), one side would wind up defecting to Russia. That’s what MIC has been trying it’s ass off to keep from happening since the cold war ended.
September 11th, 2008 at 1:51 am
“Perhaps he’d like to take the opportunity to for once put some substantive daylight between himself and the Bush administration.”
Substantive? You must be new in Bush’s America.
September 11th, 2008 at 7:41 am
Well, clearly McCain’s response will be … wait a minute, did you say “put some substantive daylight”? Your use of that metaphor could only be a conscious attempt to mock McCain’s time as a POW (obviously, as a POW his captors controlled his access to daylight). I am outraged! Vote McCain/Palin!
September 11th, 2008 at 9:24 am
The Pakistani army can no longer be considered an ally
Should they ever have been considered an ally? Only in the world of Republican rent-a-thug policy.
September 11th, 2008 at 9:57 am
The last thing we want to do is to play into the hands of the jihadists.
Gosh, you think so? Too bad Mr. E. O’Neal was not able to share this insight with the Bush Administration before the invasion of Iraq. If he had, we would be immeasurably better off.
September 11th, 2008 at 10:13 am
After failing to extinguish Al-Qaeda in the Tora Bora mountains in 2002, the Sock-Puppet President says Waal, it doesn’t much matter now. It’s a history thing. We’ll all be dead.
After a useless invasion of Iraq and an incompetent, corrupt occupation, the Sucker-Puncher-In-Chief says Hey, it’s hard work. Our brave men and women. Pallets of shrink-wrapped money. Touching a soldier’s wound. A president’s quiet tears. World safer without Saddam so it’s all good.
After years of ignoring the resurgence of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghainstan, because his ego would allow nothing less than “all in” in Iraq, Lil’ Boots thinks he’s a great president. Don’t much matter what anyone else thinks, long as I can look my Daddy in the eye, 41 to 43; yeah.
After years of failure — John McCain can do nothing but defend the policies of Shooter and the Peevish Dullard. McCain’s done well the past few months, praising Our Brave Men and Women, and The Man Called Petraeus, and Teh Surge!! Awsomest Strategtation Evah!!!.
McCain embraces a cherry-picked contemporary history of the past eight years of Thug rule — but never mentions that the end result of the nobility and honor and service has been failure, bankruptcy, and Sarah Palin’s pipeline to god.
He’s been epoxied to Cheney / Bush; nothing can change that.
September 11th, 2008 at 10:15 am
“American officials say that they will notify Pakistan when they conduct limited ground attacks like the Special Operations raid last Wednesday in a Pakistani village near the Afghanistan border, but that they will not ask for its permission.”
The administration’s disdain for the rule of law and national sovereignty is now officially on the record. And this move is supposed to make Pakistan cooperate more closely with us in the GWOT? God, the incompetence and cluelessness of this administration really knows no bounds…
September 11th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
It probably doesnt matter anyway. Bush is too preoccupied with cutting and running from Iraq to try turning things around with his cutting and running from Afghanistan.
September 11th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
MOdern REpublicanism in a nutshell:
“Cargo cults thus focus on efforts to overcome what they perceive as the undue influence of the others attracting the goods, by conducting rituals imitating behavior they have observed among the holders of the desired wealth and presuming that their deities and ancestors will, at last, recognize their own people and send the cargo to them instead. Thus, a characteristic feature of cargo cults is the belief that spiritual agents will, at some future time, give much valuable cargo and desirable manufactured products to the cult members.”
September 11th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
Allow me to reach into my bottomless well of cynicism…
This is not about the Taliban or Afghanistan or war or anything like this. The Bush administration is making a last minute attempt to grab Osama Bin Laden. If they succeed, Bush and McCain get a big jump in the polls and the election is in the bag.
The deaths of several hundred Pakistanis and the protests of Pakistan itself are irrelevant. The important issue is getting those tax cuts made permanent.
September 11th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
My friends, for five and a half years, i was not allowed to be a dishonest and intellectually inconsistent tool.
September 11th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
But TERRITORIAL SOVEREIGNTY is absolute!!!! In the 21st Century countries are not allowed to just invade other countries!
(John McCain & W said so when Obama said we should follow Bin Laden into Waziristan)
Just look what those horrible Russians did to Georgia! Thank god we would never do that to Pakistan.
September 11th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
The only time McCain disagrees with Bush is when Bush agrees with Obama.
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