Obama says he would invade Pakistan without consent of the local government

[Kernunnos]

If you thought that Bush is a dangerous dilettante you should read this article: democratic presidential hopeful Obama, " the black Kennedy", has stated that he would be invading Afghanistan to quell terrorism even without the consent of the Pakistan's government.

It would just be the start of World War Four because any moslem would take up arms against US (and its NATO allies ..), no moslem nation would swallow such a colonialist move.

So this is the level of intelligence of the man that has been portrayed by liberal medias as "the new hope".

If this is the new hope for the US people, and for their willing or unwilling european allies, we want the old one.



Obama says he would send troops into Pakistan to hunt down terrorists
By Associated Press
Wednesday, August 1, 2007 - Updated: 01:27 PM EST

WASHINGTON - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Wednesday that he would send troops into Pakistan to hunt down terrorists even without local permission if warranted - an attempt to show strength when his chief rival has described his foreign policy skills as naive.
The Illinois senator warned Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf that he must do more to shut down terrorist operations in his country and evict foreign fighters under an Obama presidency, or Pakistan will risk a U.S. troop invasion and losing hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid.
"Let me make this clear," Obama said in a speech prepared for delivery at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. "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-Qaida leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will."
The excerpts were provided by the Obama campaign in advance of the speech.
Obama’s speech comes the week after his rivalry with New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton erupted into a public fight over their diplomatic intentions.
Obama said he would be willing to meet leaders of rogue states like Cuba, North Korea and Iran without conditions, an idea that Clinton criticized as irresponsible and naive. Obama responded by using the same words to describe Clinton’s vote to authorize the Iraq war and called her "Bush-Cheney lite."
Thousands of Taliban fighters are based in Pakistan’s vast and jagged mountains, where they can pass into Afghanistan, train for suicide operations and find refuge from local tribesmen. Intelligence experts warn that al-Qaida could be rebuilding here to mount another attack on the United States.
Musharraf has been a key ally of Washington in fighting terrorism since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, but has faced accusations from some quarters in Pakistan of being too closely tied to America.
The Bush administration has supported Musharraf and stressed the need to cooperate with Pakistan, but lately administration officials have suggested the possibility of military strikes to deal with al-Qaida and its leader, Osama bin Laden.
Analysts say an invasion could risk destabilizing Pakistan, breeding more militancy and undermining Musharraf. The Pakistani Foreign Office, protective of its national sovereignty, has warned that U.S. military action would violate international law and be deeply resented.
A military invasion could be risky, given Pakistan’s hostile terrain and the suspicion of its warrior-minded tribesmen against uninvited outsiders.
Congress passed legislation Friday that would tie aid from the United States to Islamabad’s efforts to stop al-Qaida and the Taliban from operating in its territory. President Bush has yet to sign it.

Obama’s speech was a condemnation of President Bush’s leadership in the war on terror. He said the focus on Iraq has left Americans in more danger than before Sept. 11, and that Bush has misrepresented the enemy as Iraqis who are fighting a civil war instead of the terrorists responsible for the attacks six years ago.
"He confuses our mission," Obama said, then he spread responsibility to lawmakers like Clinton who voted for the invasion. "By refusing to end the war in Iraq, President Bush is giving the terrorists what they really want, and what the Congress voted to give them in 2002: a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences."
Obama said that as commander in chief he would remove troops from Iraq and putting them "on the right battlefield in Afghanistan and Pakistan." He said he would send at least two more brigades to Afghanistan and increase nonmilitary aid to the country by $1 billion.
He also said he would create a three-year, $5 billion program to share intelligence with allies worldwide to take out terrorist networks from Indonesia to Africa.

END OF ARTICLE


The idea of sending all troops in Afghanistan would have been possibly good before the invasion of Iraq, now it is a little too late to reason in terms of invasions, mr. Obama: and entering Pakistan without pakistani consent would be a greatest error than Bush did with the iraqi invasion ... Not to mention the fact that the Soviets, who could be ruthless unlike the US where public opinion will never aloow a serous imperial policy to be enacted, didn't succeed at subjugating the afghan peoples

[Marcus Marulus]

Both Obama and Hillary have repeatedly stated that they intend to continue along Bush's bellicose line. No surprise here.

[Kernunnos]

Originally Posted by Plethon

Both Obama and Hillary have repeatedly stated that they intend to continue along Bush's bellicose line. No surprise here.

Indeed but he shows the strategic preparation of a cartoon watcher ... imagine the impressive array of weapons of the U.S. army under the command of this man.

WW4 in less than five years of presidency ... I once talked to a pakistani, he was enraged at Bush as usual, and he said to me emphatically that if Bush would invade Iran it would be WW4.

What hit me was the fact that he was keenly aware of such issues, even if he was a common worker: his friends nodded or tried to steer him away from such dangerous discussion with a westerner, in all cases they were not alien from such discussions at all.

There was anger among them.

Think of what has happened just for the Mohammed cartoons.

A cold blooded invasion of Pakistan without the consent of the already unpopular pro-Western government would really led to a general rebellion within the moslem world.

[Strengthandhonour]

From personal experiences, seems that Muslims tend to be more aware of the delicate world situation than westerners.

[Marcus Marulus]

Originally Posted by Breha

Indeed but he shows the strategic preparation of a cartoon watcher ... imagine the impressive array of weapons of the U.S. army under the command of this man.

Yes, indeed, I agree, it is a frightening perspective.

[Marcus Marulus]

Obama - the new Kennedy by Justin Raimondo

Onward - into Waziristan by Patrick Buchanan

[bombadillo]

According to a post I read on a related site, Tancredo recently recommended bombing moslem holy sites. It seems that many of these presidential hopefuls live in cloud cuckoo land. There seems to be no careful and honest discussion of what the implications of these daft proposals.

[FlashVoyager]

I doubt Obama will go as far as the official election. He's like a joke machine, he doesn't have any position on any issue. He just says something everyone agrees on "I believe in freedom", "Peace for all". He's just one of those who sticks to the popular opinion.

[Theobald]

The Americans are not stupid enough to invade Pakistan - or even Iran or Syria for that matter. They know very well that it would mean the end of pro-American regimes in the Muslim world : Egypt, Jordania, Saudi Arabia, Morocco. The Islamists there are only waiting for such an American move.
Perhaps some crazy president would have the idea of invading Pakistan but he would quickly be neutralized by real decision makers, secret services, ... Well, unless they really want a new World War to happen...

[Marcus Marulus]

Originally Posted by Theobald

The Americans are not stupid enough to invade... Iran or Syria for that matter.

It is very likely there won't be any war against Iran. If they had mind to do it, they would have done already a year ago. There would have been probably only some strategic bombing, without ground invasion.

The fact is that America always needs enemies to assert itself, an eternal confrontation, or a constant struggle between "good" and "evil", as they like to define, has become their raison d'etre.

Iranian military is no match for US military (nor is Israel seriously threatened by it), nor is Pakistan's, although they have the bomb. Americans know it very well, but they intentionally exaggerate the power of their adversaries in order to keep their (ie. American) population scared and to keep their military-economic machine running. In the similar manner they used to speak about the Soviet military power in extremely exaggerated and overestimated terms during the so-called Cold War.

Maybe Iran would in the future serve as an image of the arch-enemy, the source of all evil, the country they would point at whenever some international crisis breaks out? Maybe along with Russia (again)?

If they invaded Iran and evetually occupied it, that would mean to destroy such a useful arch-enemy in the Middle East, as a result of what their propaganda machine would find itself in dire straights. What to do next? Invent a new arch-enemy? It's not as simple as that.

And the Middle East would sink into a new uncontrollable chaos.

[bombadillo]

Originally Posted by Plethon

The fact is that America always needs enemies to assert itself, an eternal confrontation, or a constant struggle between "good" and "evil", as they like to define, has become their raison d'etre.

... Americans know it very well, but they intentionally exaggerate the power of their adversaries in order to keep their (ie. American) population scared and to keep their military-economic machine running. In the similar manner they used to speak about the Soviet military power in extremely exaggerated and overestimated terms of the military power of the USSR during the so-called Cold War.

Excellent post and bang on target. Yes, the US military-industrial complex needs an enemy to justify itself. And at an even deeper level, the US exists and defines itself on the basis of antagonism and confrontation (as the US doesn't have a real culture of its own). Take away an external foe, and the centrifugal forces at play in the US will lead it to splinter and fragment: the only tenuous unity comes from collectively being against (take your pick) the commies/ moslems/ Chinese (some day?). The state of paranoia and anxiety engendered by US mass media vanishes the moment one leaves American shores; it's in the context of this paranoia and anxiety that these American politicians make their absurd suggestions, which seem to belong more to the world of Dr. Strangelove: a case of life imitating art.

[Monolith]

Originally Posted by Plethon

The fact is that America always needs enemies to assert itself, an eternal confrontation, or a constant struggle between "good" and "evil", as they like to define, has become their raison d'etre.

Indeed, that kind of behavior is directly connected to both oil companies that draw profit from wars(and later pay taxes in the USA) and America's military industry. Can you imagine USA functioning properly with no wars raging? I surely can't.

Iranian military is no match for US military (nor is Israel seriously threatened by it), nor is Pakistan's, although they have the bomb. Americans know it very well, but they intentionally exaggerate the power of their adversaries in order to keep their (ie. American) population scared and to keep their military-economic machine running. In the similar manner they used to speak about the Soviet military power in extremely exaggerated and overestimated terms during the so-called Cold War.

I agree. Iranian military is no match for the US military, but is nevertheless a dangerous adversary. American casualties would surely be great if they launched the ground invasion, and the Iraqi case showed that that they'd lose additional troops even if they conquered the country. With Iran's population of about 70 mil. and Iraq's almost three times less, the attacks on the eventual US "transitional" forces in Iran would surely be much more frequent. That would soon produce detrimental effects to the war campaign(anti-war demonstrations) in the America, concerning the loss of troops, so any ruling political power would most likely lose its power.
All in all, I don't believe USA has guts and power to invade Pakistan.
It's primarily because Pakistan is a big country(164,741,924 population (July 2007 est.)), in possession of a nuclear weaponry.

[bombadillo]

Originally Posted by Bardyllis

All in all, I don't believe USA has guts and power to invade Pakistan.
It's primarily because Pakistan is a big country(164,741,924 population (July 2007 est.)) with the possession of nuclear weaponry.

And I'm not sure it's necessary. Pakistan has been a US client state almost from the day it achieved independence. One Pakistani head of state after another has paid obeisance to the US -- regardless of national or personal dignity. Never has the country's political and military elites shown any sign of backbone, i.e., the intransigence and defiance of a country such as Iran. If the US is serious about clearing up the northern areas of "extremists" it will readily be able to achieve a modus vivendi with whoever is (ostensibly) in power in Islamabad to allow US troops on Pakistani soil. Pakistani "leaders" (I use the term loosely) "govern" at the pleasure of Washington. If Musharraf outlives his usefulness, Bhutto and Sharif are waiting in the wings ready to oblige in the most servile manner.