Posted by
Doctor Poddy on Wednesday, February 20, 2008 10:27:51 PM
February 20th, 2008 by Nancy Reyes
The press seems to be busy canonizing Obama as the next Messiah,
with one story after another discussing his charisma, his success among
minorities, and contrasting his “successful” campaign against that of
Hillary Clinton, who is noticed mainly in news stories reporting her
impending demise.
I predict that by convention time, Democrats will face the problem
that they may have chosen another McGovern, and the irony is that the
choice will be that they could have nominated a real challenger, a hard
nosed and competent Hillary Clinton.
Novelty triumphs over experience in this case…and missing from the news is the little fact that Obama’s future foreign policy advisors were busy visiting terror supporting Syria discussing peace about the same time as a major terrorist (called a “mythic figure” by
the IHTribune), one who killed the Marines in Beruit, arranged airline
hijacking and had complicity in the deaths of a couple thousand of New
Yorkers, got himself blown up by somebody who planted a car bomb.
Obama has won many votes as a pacifist, supporting an immediate
withdrawal of troops from Iraq lets many peace activists back him, but
a combination of troop withdrawal and peace making with Syria, a major
supporter of terrosism, sends a dangerous message to Iran hardliners at
at time when reformers in that country are trying to reestablish
democracy.
So where are the hard questions on these policies by the media?
Another speech may come back to haunt Obama now that the press doesn’t have Hillary Clinton to push around any more.
Back then ABC News called it a “Bold Speech about War on Terror”.
In a strikingly bold speech about terrorism Wednesday,
Democratic presidential candidate Illinois Sen. Barack Obama called not
only for a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, but a redeployment of
troops into Afghanistan and even Pakistan — with or without the
permission of Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf.
“I understand that President Musharraf has his own challenges,”
Obama said, “but let me make this clear. 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 Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005. If we have
actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and
President Musharraf won’t act, we will.”
The problem?
Well, since then a lot has changed.
At the time of the speech, Musharraf had made peace with tribal
areas, essentially allowing the religious extremists alone. But it
didn’t work. The terrorists started making trouble, including killing
Pakistani troops, and Musharraf sent troops back in. The Islamicist backed polititicians trying to run things in the tribal areas turned out to be incompetent.
As a result of violence, public opinion turned against the extremists in the tribal areas, and the incompetence of those politicians in religious based parties led to these parties losing in the recent election.
So the recent elections turn out to be a defeat for Musharraf but not necessarily a defeat for Bush’s war on terror.
Even Musharraf may not resign: since the Pakistan election system is parliamentary,
a coalition must be made between various parties. The Late President
Bhutto’s party was the big winner, meaning her husband Zabari will have
to make a coalition with Sharif, a leader of another party and
different ethnic region.
So now that the Bush policies have resulted in a shaky but viable
reemergence of democracy in Pakistan, where does Obama’s “bomb
Pakistan” speech stand?
Making him look naive.
Indeed, within eight hours of the election reports, McCain has used the speech to ridicule Obama:
It’s slightly counter-intuitive that Obama could sound more hawkish than McCain,
but when it comes to Pakistan, that may be the case. Last night at his
Wisconsin victory speech in Columbus, Ohio, McCain came out swinging
against what he perceives as the Illinois senator’s naiveté of
international affairs and world events.
Providing a potential sneak preview of his general election talking
points, he asked, “Will we risk the confused leadership of an
inexperienced candidate who once suggested bombing our ally, Pakistan?”
The likely nominee’s comments referenced a counter-terrorism policy
speech that the presidential hopeful gave in August in Washington, DC.
Hmm…sounds like McCain has inherited someone from Clinton’s war room’s “quick response” attack machine.