Over the reality that Kennedy was also much like Reagan and Bush. He pretty much escalated the Vietnam War.

And let's not forget all President's have their entanglements. I don't agree with most of them but cherry-picking is pretty funny.

President Clinton was terrible in Somalia, decent in Bosnia, failed to address Rwanda and, while he cut Military Spending 30%, escalated the horrendous program of Rendition.

So I think you're whitewashing history.

As for Pakistan, I've always favored tactical strikes over an occupying force. That's what I congratulate President Clinton on. If Senator Obama follows in those footsteps, he can't really do any wrong.

And you can't forget Lee Hamilton just endorsed this initiative and this plan. The CIA just endorsed it as well, three weeks ago, when they used it with amazing success.

I think this is a non-issue that few people will understand and it has the potential to be blown out of proportion with comments like "He wants to bomb Pakistan".

That's a disservice to a discussion that requires a decent look at history, understanding blowback, understanding the local populace and realizing this can't be easily summarized.

I endorse his plan. I endorse Realism. I also endorse reintroducing ourselves to the world in a manner that, from the beginning - January 20th, 2009, in this instance - says the past eight years were a tragedy and the United States of America will reassess and reintegrate into the world stage in a manner that befits a Super Power that will soon compete with the EU and Communist China.

My take on it.

So if we know where terrorist camps are or have concrete intelligence on where Bin Laden is hiding we should just sit back till it festers into another Afghanistan?

nice policy there sparky!

Second, the idea that it is Obama's fault for the instability in that area then I pretty much heard everything in the book.  This is really getting ridiculous.  As an Indian American I take great offense that this is somehow Obama's fault.  The tribal factions in that country have no national loyalty whatsoever.  They believe in Sharia Law and there is no national campaign to reduce their influence.  Bin Laden's hold in the area is causing a major problem and the fact that the ineptitude of Musharaff is partially to blame.  He doesn't have the gonads to force a full military action against Waziristan and the fact on why he hasn't developed a democratic process in Pakistan is because he hasn't been pressured from Washington to do so.

/Obama is right on this

regarding Pakistan. She just doesn't think you deserve to here about how she'll position America as POTUS in advance.

Obama wasn't even his party's frontrunner when Musharraf declared the state of emergency its silly and a little arrogant to think his actions were somehow caused by Obama's huge sin of actually honestly laying out the only sensible foriegn policy position on the table.

Musharraf has been eclipsed and now the U.S. will pay the price for the Bush administration's support of him just like it does every time they prop up a dictator.

Musharraf is a military dictator.  He can always drum up an excuse for his actions.  Obama made his Pakistan statement back in August.  Do you really think that the threat of President Obama using military force SEVENTEEN months later was his real reason?

"OH NO!  Future President Obama might target terrorists here in seventeen months!  We better declare a state of emergency...you know...for practice!"

If Musharraf wants to crack down, he'll crack down, regardless of what a Presidential candidate says.

Now Obama destabilized Pakistan?  You're a frakking idiot.  The Obama Derangement Syndrome around here is at a fever-pitch.

There are many reasons why Pakistan is destabilized at present, absolutely none of which have anything to do with the Democratic nomination.  Please try and avoid letting the bullshit run so rampant in the future KTHXBYE

To say that Obama is destabilizing Pakistan is to demonstrate a poor understanding of the recent history of and current situation in Pakistan.

Pakistan, a nuclear state since 1972 (announcing it had a nuclear weapon in 1998), has been a destabilized state since its inception.  It has been at nearly constant war with India since its founding.  The last major battle was in 1999 (it was known as the Kargil conflict.  After which, Gen. Pervez Musharaff seized power.

There has been major tension between the many citizens of Pakistan who believe in democratic government.  In fact, Musharaff's only support base was among the military, which was a very popular institution to be sure.  But lack of freedoms gets to any community.  There is also a major al-Qaeda, Taliban and war lord presence in the NW corner of the country.  All the above has created vast tension and serious legitimacy issues for the government of Pakistan.  

Obama had nothing to do with it. Dictators will use whatever they can to cling to legitimacy.  The proof that neither the policy nor Obama's insistence on said policy are destabilizing Pakistan is that the country has not exploded into violence.  Despite the assaination of the opposition leader and the election of the opposition party to lead the nation, it has not yet descended into into significant violence.

Al-qaeda and the Taliban are still around.  While they are not a significant threat to destroy our nation, they remain a threat to our people.  Any effort to destroy them is justified and was accepted by the nations of the world on September 28, 2001 when the Security Council passed a resolution in support of the U.S.

Do you have the remotest notion of what you are talking about?  This is a complex issue but Obama's position is arguably sound.  The problem is that the civilian majority coalition is even less inclined than Musharraf to deal with the jihadists in the NWFP.  There is no way we are going to discuss this sensibly without rehashing Pakistani political history going back two decades.

The point is that Pakistan is receiving enormous amounts of US money and has been consistently duplicitous in it's policy towards our terrorist enemies.  Shall we go the full Monty on this?  We are going to end up talking about Afghanistan, Kashmir, India, Iraq and Iran, the ISI and the Muttahida Majlis Amal, Jamaat-Ulema-Islam and Jammaat-e-Islam in some detail.  Not to mention some horrific choices made by decision makers going back to the coup by Zia and extending through every administration including Clinton's.  There are no innocent actors in this, and Pakistan is clearly our biggest security threat in the region if not the world.  To identify Obama's lucid comments on our current situation as somehow part of the problem is hard to accept.

More than you studied of what I wrote in this diary, that's for sure.  Read the diary, come back and talk about things I actually wrote instead of wild charges I didn't make, and maybe we'll go somewhere.

What I'm saying here is that aggressive statements by American Presidents or prominent candidates cause ripples in foreign politics.  Obama's previous statements have already served Musharraf by providing him with justification fodder for his repression.  I question the need of providing more, when there are ways to express your foreign policies without specifying specific military actions against specific nations.

Speaking of such matters has been known to have consequences, and that's not really a controversial subject in Foggy Bottom.  What would be controversial would be to pretend otherwise.

Pointless in the sense that it has no useful point to it.

The same is quickly becoming true of the war in Afghanistan.  It used to have a point.  The point was killing Osama Bin Laden and the people behind 9/11.  But they have moved on, so we are basically just squatting in case he comes back.  The people of Afghanistan were never any threat to us.  They are basically living in the Stone Age.

The only military activity that IS NOT POINTLESS would be one that kills Osama Bin Laden and his top lieutenants.  And I don't mean the wannabes in IRaq.  

Therefore, going after Bin Laden inside Pakistan is eminently sensible.  It certainly makes more sense than occupying two countries that don't directly relate to American security in any way, absent Osama Bin Laden's being there.

If we can get him, let's get him.  Then we can pull our troops out of the Middle East and Afghanistan, pat ourselves on the back, and move on with our lives.

How easily we forget the real point of all this happy horseshit "War on Terror."  Even today, a lot of people on the left will say the war in Iraq is bad (it is), but the war in Afghanistan is good, without connecting that thought to the issue of whether or not we can get Bin Laden.  Occupying Afghanistan without vigorously targeting Bin Laden in Pakistan makes a mockery of the whole idea of Afghanistan occupation.

And, by the way, isn't this the third diary (first one on the front page) that totally glosses over the distinction between "Foreign Policy Realism" (traditional, normal Democratic think-tank foreign policy), which is what Obama was referencing in the quote above, and "Neoconservatism?  When Obama says that he is a Realist (capital R) in the tradition of Reagan, Kennedy, and Bush Sr. (you somehow forgot Kennedy was in that list), you take his statement out of context and distort it.  And you display a sad ignorance of the history of the neocon takeover of our foreign policy, which is what he was clearly referencing.

Reading assignment for the ill-informed: Rise of the Vulcans: The Rise of Bush's War Cabinet by Mann.

Perv was talking about declaring a state of emergency because he was worried about losing his grip on power.  If you recall, that's exactly what happened when Parliamentary elections were held; his PML-Q was handily defeated by the PPP/PML-N.  

Believing that Obama had the slightest bit to do with the subsequent events betrays an immense amount of ignorance about Pakistani politics.

I did not buy this argument back then and I still do not buy it.

Just because Musharraf's government uses something as an excuse does not mean we should be troubled.  Of course they would prefer the Bush approach where we basically let Pakistan have us by the balls.  If we don't feel they're cooperating like they should, there's no shame in making that clear.

The much-ballyhooed claims that Obama's statements touched off "riots" in Pakistan turned out to be phony.  There were a few right-wing groups that organized demonstrations, but big deal.

I tend to agree that edgy issues like this are best dealt with in private.  But when our private Pakistan policy isn't achieving results, there's nothing wrong with sending a more public message.  And politically, Obama is doing what he needs to do.  I don't really see the harm in it.