Webloggin » Obama Demonstrates That Shortsightedness is Part of His Resume

When Illinois Senator Barack Obama stated that he would sit down and meet with leaders of terrorist nations he was criticized by Hillary Clinton as being naive (from a foreign policy perspective). Ever since then he has been on a public relations spin to counter that criticism by talking tough, albeit selective as to whom he would get tough with.

WASHINGTON - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Wednesday that he would send troops into Pakistan to hunt down terrorists even without local permission if warranted — an attempt to show strength when his chief rival has described his foreign policy skills as naive.

The Illinois senator warned Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf that he must do more to shut down terrorist operations in his country and evict foreign fighters under an Obama presidency, or Pakistan will risk a U.S. troop invasion and losing hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid.

“Let me make this clear,” Obama said in a speech at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. “There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al-Qaida leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will.”

Pakistan is the one nation where President Bush is using diplomatic relations to fight terrorism and Senator Obama wants to invade them? This is simply more proof that Obama doesn’t have what it takes to be President. Please, for the nations sake, remove yourself from the running before anyone else takes you seriously!!!

And please delineate for me the difference between al-Qaeda in Iraq and al-Qaeda in Pakistan. Aren’t both groups, who are related minimally by hate and motive if not also by financial backing, looking to target the United States with death and destruction?

Let’s not lose sight of the fact that Obama is making threats toward a major ally of the United States and Great Britain in the fight against al-Qaeda. Yes many terrorists are holed up in Pakistan, in fact it is a terrorist haven in the tribal north. But these are the same rogue elements that are also seeking to undermine Musharraf’s presidency because he cooperates with the United States! Our problem is his problem in that respect.

If Obama were President he would have completely undermined the efforts of both governments. What a dolt.

Worse however is that Obama is overtly saying that he would invade a country with a population approximately 6 times that of Iraq. That is 27.5 million compared to 167.7 million.

Captain Ed puts this into perspective from a geographical military point of view.

Not to demean Obama’s vast military expertise, either, but has he looked at a map of Pakistan? It’s shaped like a wedge, with the base on the Arabian Sea and the Waziristan region almost the farthest point from the water. How does Obama propose to create lines of communication for an invasion? Right now we rely on Pakistan for overflight to Afghanistan to supply our troops for the fight against the Taliban there. General Obama would eliminate those lines of communication overnight, leaving the invasion force critically isolated — unless he thinks we can start resupplying Afghanistan through Iran.

Only an idiot would invade Pakistan from the north, if at all. Any war against Pakistan would have to seize the Arabian Sea ports first, and then roll through the center of Pakistan — where all of the formerly moderate Pakistanis would have lived — to get to a mountainous region that Pakistan itself has hesitated to engage.

And did we mention that Pakistan has a potential mobilization of 39 million troops?

Did Senator Obama lose sight of the fact that Pakistan is a nuclear armed country? A typical bit of shortsightedness on the part of Democrats who seem to have no issue looking past terrorist states such as Iran seeking to become the same.

There is no way to soften the idiocy of Obama’s get tough bluster. In reality we all know that it is a bunch of hot air. These guys will say anything to get elected. They are not thinking people, they are poll driven ideologues.

Obama demonstrated why he needs to sit back and watch for a while. Hillary Clinton of all people goaded him into making this colossal misstep. I have no doubt that she will take the primary and likely choose Obama as a running mate. Any other option for the Dems will prove to be an uphill battle.

Update: I almost let that “failed to act” comment slip by. If Democrats are going to start using that one then perhaps they should suffer the same kind of censorship as critics of Bill Clinton who correctly pointed out the he repeatedly passed on Bin Laden before 9/11. But then again, perhaps Obama was going for a twofer, sending an alluding message to Hillary and taking a jab at Bush at the same time. In either way we will have to score this one up for Hillary.