I have no love for Barack Obama, but I’m just not seeing the criticism he’s getting (from right and left) over his comments about Pakistan.

Obama said if we have intelligence that there are active al Qaeda cells in Pakistan planning an attack on the U.S. and Musharaf doesn’t act or doesn’t give us permission to act, he’d act anyway.

What exactly is wrong with this policy? If we have knowledge that Osama bin Laden is hiding in Pakistan, and President Musharaf isn’t acting to get him, or refuses to allow us to get him, it seems to me that we go in and get him anyway. Isn’t that exactly what we did in Afghanistan?

I find it strange that supporters of the Iraq war would be criticizing Obama for the Pakistan stuff. So what, invading, occupying, and fighting a five-year (at the very least) war with a country that had posed no real threat to the U.S. at all is wise and commendable, but actually going out to get the people who perpetrated September 11, or who we have actual intelligence may be planning other attacks, is an abomination (pardon the pun)?

What am I missing, here? And spare me the talk about Musharraf, the ally. First, he hasn’t been much of an ally. And second, the hypothetical was that he was harboring terrorists, in which case he would no longer be the dubious ally he is.

That Sens. Dodd and Clinton are attacking Obama over this seems to be to speak more about their naiveté than his. There are still people out there who want to kill us. We do still need to fight them. The primary left can’t let our foolish errand in Iraq blind them to that.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 9th, 2007 at 12:25 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.