The War With Pakistan

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16 Sep 2008 02:53 pm

In an excellent and prescient piece, Hitchens takes on Pakistan. He's right, I think, to acknowledge that an Afghan-Pakistan war is now a de facto reality and that the Bush administration has just followed Barack Obama's advice and started fighting the core al Qaeda now given refuge by Islamabad. Hitch:

...[Obama] is committed in advance to a serious projection of American power into the heartland of our deadliest enemy. And that, I think, is another reason why so many people are reluctant to employ truthful descriptions for the emerging Afghan-Pakistan confrontation: American liberals can't quite face the fact that if their man does win in November, and if he has meant a single serious word he's ever said, it means more war, and more bitter and protracted war at that—not less.

Yes, it could. The difference is: it would be a war against the real enemy, not one we partly created with the security vacuum we opened up in Iraq. Since I'm not a liberal on these things - despite what today's "conservatives" claim - I can face the idea of a president Obama taking on and finally defeating Osama. In fact, that's the major reason why I favor his candidacy. I want to win the war on terror we are currently losing. And I want all of us in this war - Democrat and Republican. Getting a Democratic president to take responsibility for a war we will have to fight for generations is critical to our long-term success. If it remains a partisan enterprise, used for domestic political points on the Cheney and Rove model, al Qaeda will win.

Obama will try to correct the massive strategic error of the Iraq invasion and pivot Western allies toward a greater focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan. I believe that Obama will be able to do this with much less global p.r. blowback than McCain and that the support president Obama will get from our European allies will dwarf McCain's. McCain's seriousness as a potential president has been undermined abroad by his crude and unintelligent response to Russia's aggression, his captivity to the most extreme neocon factions in Washington, and his unserious selection of Sarah Palin as his veep. Obama will begin with a massive wave of good will.

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