Love & War
US mulling whether to hit Taliban R&R/support areas in the vicinity of Quetta, Baluchistan, Pakistan proper, where big mullahs have fallen back due to the heat in Waziristan’s tribal areas. via Al Qaeda Early Warning System, aka NYT. Rather than whack NYT for reporting what admin officials are blabbing about, though, it’s more useful to consider what it says about the Obama admin. A purposeful warning to Pakistan, get on the stick? Sounds a little more like divisions and disgruntlement within the Obama admin.
The Obama camp, dating back to the election, has been a little schizo in both rhetoric and deed on whether to make love or war, with its adoption of some war policies it had rejected, its insistence that it makes war by making love, complicated by its ongoing Hamlet-like “to make more war or less war, that is the question” soliloquy.
Pakistan is a tough nut. Bush applied gentle pressure to a benevolent dictator in hopes of guarding his Afghan flanks and keeping a lid on a bubbling nuclear-armed Islamic cauldron. He got some benefits in high-profile AQ grabs, but the pressure on tribal areas failed until direct action in the form of Predator strikes was adoptd. Obama inherited a shaky democracy. For all his talk of making nice in the world, Pakistan is the place he publicly announced he would invade, in his bid to look tough on the undesireable activities formerly known as terrorism and perpetrators previously known as evildoers. This expansion reportedly is being pushed by the Petraeus camp to mixed reviews within the admin, though exactly what the military is proposing is unclear. Pakistan reportedly has been having it both ways on the Waziristan missile strikes … providing intel and squawking about sovereignty. So how does that work when missiles are hitting in and around Quetta? What about Karachi. Complex picture, not much aided by the Obama admin’s half-pregnant approach to war, and its not particularly confidence- or awe-inspiring mixed messages to allies and enemies.
Topics: Afghanistan, Obama, Pakistan, military, pols
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 8:52 am Comments (1) on Wednesday, March 18, 2009
One Response to “Love & War”
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March 18th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
Just more evidence that Obama is the “Not Ready For Prime Time President”.