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President Obama Strikes Pakistan

February 21st, 2008
By ROBERT STEIN


With Pervez Musharraf on the electoral ropes, US policy has morphed from Bush’s approach to Barack Obama’s in unilaterally taking out an al Qaeda commander in Pakistan’s tribal area.

Last July, Obama was criticized for saying, ““If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will.”

Now, according to a highly sourced report in the Washington Post, the CIA has done just that. In a Tom Clancyish operation, missiles from a drone aircraft killed Abu Laith al-Libi, a senior al Qaeda commander who had been eluding the CIA’s dragnet.

“It was the first successful strike against al-Qaeda’s core leadership in two years,” the Post reports, “and it involved, U.S. officials say, an unusual degree of autonomy by the CIA inside Pakistan.

“Having requested the Pakistani government’s official permission for such strikes on previous occasions, only to be put off or turned down, this time the U.S. spy agency did not seek approval. The government of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was notified only as the operation was underway, according to the officials, who insisted on anonymity because of diplomatic sensitivities.”

Six months ago, Obama was denounced by other Presidential candidates as naïve and pooh-poohed by then White House Press Secretary Tony Snow.

“I’m confident,” President Bush harrumphed, “that with actionable intelligence we will be able to bring top Al Qaeda to justice. We’re in constant communications with the Pakistan government.”

Not this time. In the light of elections in Pakistan and back here, change seems to be literally in the air.

Cross-posted from my blog.



This entry was posted on Thursday, February 21st, 2008 at 9:51 am and is filed under Mideast, Bush Administration, Foreign Policy, Osama bin Laden, Newsweek Blogitics, Al Qaeda, CIA, 2008 Elections, Barack Obama, Terrorism, Pakistan, Politics. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Viewing 14 Comments

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    I would feel better about these kinds of tactics to eliminate those who promote violence if I trusted my government to collaborate with most of our democratic allies to mange the criteria.

    Unfortunately one persons terrorist is another person's freedom fighter. What if the tables were turned in 1776?
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    I understand your point fully Paul. But when a presidential candidate (Senator Obama) was heavily criticized as being "naive" for saying what the Bush Administration/CIA did, are people now going to say that this was a "naive operation"?
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    IOKIYAAR
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    Freedom fighters actually fight the gov't they are opposing. They target governmentt institutions and soldiers as as a result sometimes win. Civilians die, but they themselves are not the objective. Terrorists specifically target civilians in vain and universally unsuccessful attempts to get some agenda accomplished.
    Hijacking planes, bombing commuter transportation, sabotage not miliatry operations.

    The insurgents in Iraq I would call freedom fighters. The 9/11 hijackers, the bombers in Spain, Bali, London, are terrorists. One of them is achieving their goal, the other is just getting people killed. See if you too can spot the difference.
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    The terrorists (which is what they are) in Iraq include several opportunistic foreigners. (And no, the US forces aren't what I am referring to.)
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    I'm glad it didn't just happen once in Yemen. Missile away!
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    Am I the only one that doesn't know what "IOKIYAAR" stands for?
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    "IOKIYAAR" = "It's Okay If You Are A Republican"

    Source.
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    Since Obama threw out his idea in July I've been waiting for a good discussion on this topic.

    I supported Obama's idea back in July and I support Bush for doing this (with one caveat, below). I agree with Slamfu, there is a difference between terrorists and freedom fighters.

    We should be careful about which individual/group we bomb in these situations.

    As Bush said, terrorists are without borders. The war on terror is a new type of war.

    Given this, I think the US should put a proposal (developed after consulting with various countries) as to ground rules in these situations.

    What's good for the goose is good for the gander. What I mean is that if tthe US can do this, other countries will feel that they can do this, too. And given that some governments may label freedom fighters as "terrorists" and want to go after them we could be in strange situations. We've all seen how Bush plays with words and definitions...

    As an example, I'd hate for a country like Venezuela to suddenly deicde that there are terrorists targets in Houston and send a missle to take those targets out, because the US won't take out those "terrorist" targets.

    I'm not being flip, either. What needs to be in place (and this is the caveat I have with BUsh's action) is a clear understanding among nations as to what the ground rules are. I do not expect all countries to go along with any plan, but we can't have nations (including the US) go after what targets they consider to be terrorist in nature.

    There is a HUGE sovereignty issue here and other countries need assurances that other countries won't just send missiles in and declare the targets to be terrorists.

    Before Bush struck the target, I would have like a bigger discussion on this and some ground rules. Perhaps one of the rules might be for the US (as one example) to give a list of suspected terrorists to the UN, have the UN "pre-approve" those targets and if actionable intelligence (gathered in good faith) came to light which allowed one (or more) of those targets to be bombed, then those targets on that list, once found, could be taken out. I'm not saying this is how it should be done, this is just an idea. I'm assuming that Bush asked Pakistan first and Musharraf disagreed. Though if the terrorists targets were inside countries with corrupt governments, that's another issue.

    SO while I like Bush's action, I don't like him unilaterally doing it with seemingly no oversight from the international community, or prior discussion.

    Last word: now that Bush has done this action in Pakistan, I'll remind you that he has the Iranian Revolutionary Guard listed as a terrorist organization (thanks, Hillary!) will he use this attack on a terrorist target in Pakistan as an excuse to bomb the Iranian Revolutionary Guard? (See this is why we need ground rules so one country can't just start striking targets claiming them to be terrorist targets. In this case the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is part of the Iranian military, so I don't consider it a terrorist target.)
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    "The terrorists (which is what they are) in Iraq include several opportunistic foreigners."

    C'mon man. Al-queda in Iraq represents like 5% of the insurgency. The rest are Iraqi citizens fighting along tribal/religous lines to get their piece of the pie when all this is over and done with. If it was just "terrorists" we were fighting this would have been over in 2004. This is not a country where things get decided by voting no matter how much we'd like it to be that way. What it does have is a lot of poor desparate folks who aren't going anywhere and know they will be there long after our troops have left. People willing to fight for the future of their country in a tangible and winnable way.
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    Oh and to post something on point, IOKIYAAR sums it up nicely. And I had no idea what that meant up until now.
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    "Iraqi citizens fighting along tribal/religous lines to get their piece of the pie"

    Even the civil warriors are hardly "freedom fighters" throwing off a yoke. (We removed the Shiites' and Kurds' -- and the Iranians' -- yoke in Iraq.) Not where they rule and are oppressing others.
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    "IOKIYAAR"

    Acronym abuse -- [sigh]. Well, it's not true here, but certainly was that way about Nixon and detente and the approach to China. If Clinton or Obama were to cozy up to the new Castro government, it would be called "scandalous," "outrageous," "a betrayal of the victims of Communist oppression," "collaborating with tyranny," etc. But if a Republican did it, such as our current president, the terms would be "brilliant," "courageous," and, of course, "visionary."

    [grin]
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    "Even the civil warriors are hardly "freedom fighters" throwing off a yoke."

    Sure they are. They have no gov't, whicn means its anarchy over there. The only form of gov't worse than a despotism. In their own way, they are trying to restore order but with regards to themselves and their tribes not the general welfare of Iraq in mind. There are dozens of leaders over there each on their own agenda, terrorism vs. the US is low on their list.

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