An unfair rap?

Several liberal I know were fairly impressed with Barack Obama's big terrorism speech today. After reading it, so am I.

Before I got through it, though, I read the reaction and, at least at first blush, the criticism at least sounded fair to me:

Bill Richardson cautioned that “we should address this problem with tough diplomacy with Gen. Musharraf first, leaving the military as a last resort. It is important to reach out to moderate Muslim states and allies to ensure we do not unnecessarily inflame the Muslim world.”

Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, wasn’t so kind. “The way to deal with it is not to announce it, but to do it,” the Delaware senator said at a National Press Club event. “The last thing you want to do is telegraph to the folks in Pakistan that we are about to violate their sovereignty, putting Musharraf in the position that makes it virtually impossible for him to do anything other than what he’s done, basically cut a deal with the warlords on the border, to our great detriment.”

Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd said he wouldn’t “declare my intentions for specific military action to the media in the context of a political campaign.'’ He called it “dangerous and irresponsible to leave even the impression the U.S. would needlessly and publicly provoke a nuclear power.'’

This is all fair enough. But here's the full Pakistan portion of Obama's speech:

As President, I would make the hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid to Pakistan conditional, and I would make our conditions clear: Pakistan must make substantial progress in closing down the training camps, evicting foreign fighters, and preventing the Taliban from using Pakistan as a staging area for attacks in Afghanistan.

I understand that President Musharraf has his own challenges. 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.

And Pakistan needs more than F-16s to combat extremism. As the Pakistani government increases investment in secular education to counter radical madrasas, my Administration will increase America's commitment. We must help Pakistan invest in the provinces along the Afghan border, so that the extremists' program of hate is met with one of hope. And we must not turn a blind eye to elections that are neither free nor fair -- our goal is not simply an ally in Pakistan, it is a democratic ally. [Emphasis mine]

A few things. One, I've always been distrustful of this notion of "terrorists holed up in those mountains." I want more specificity--and not the sort of specificity that is actually a series of lies about the capabilities these people supposedly have.

Second, Obama really should clarify here. If what he means is that he'd be willing to engage in ill-advised, one-off Clinton-style bombings of possible terrorists sites in sovereign territory, then he's both on questionable ground and silly to announce his intentions in advance. If this was just sloppy language and what he really means is that he wants to more generally use the military to turn the "war on terror" into something more like "police action against violent Salafists", then I'm all for it. But based on his speech today there's no real way to know.

Third, Obama should probably avoid the suggestion that anything we do will either make Musharraf liberalize his elections, or bring about with those elections a regime that will be in any way supportive of our designs in the region. If Obama wants a working partner, well then he has little choice other than to support Musharraf. If he wants to see liberalized elections then that's fine, too, but he ought to be prepared to either lose traction with Musharraf or possibly even move the country into the hands of an unkind regime. And be stuck with it. The idea that we have this third option wherein we encourage elections in volatile parts of the world and then sabotage the new governments when we don't like the outcomes is just about as crazy as it gets.

Comments

[JimPortlandOR]

Yes. Well put.