Hmm, Obama says he'll shake hands with autocrats if they unclench their fists. Trouble is the new president's hands, like those of his predecessor, are already stained with blood. A series of American unmanned predator drones has reportedly killed a few dozen Pakistanis.
When pressed on the issue, his normally chatty vice president went mum. Ditto Obama's press secretary. Why the caginess?
Let's recap how we got here. Obama told voters a few years back he would support strikes against Pakistani territory were he supplied with actionable intelligence of terrorist activity. His then-Democratic challenger and now-secretary of state grimaced before the cameras. How naïve, she thought. Even if that is your policy, she seemed to be saying, you don't announce it to the world, kiddo. Then came hope and change and smart power and the rest was history.
So we are, let's see, exactly back where we started. We have a bomb-first, ask-questions-later policy on Pakistan. North of the border we are redeploying more brigades because our NATO allies won't pony up the troops. And we've dispatched Richard Holbrooke to the region. No doubt he is an experienced troubleshooter with sharper elbows than Dick Cheney on a bad day, but he rubs many folks the wrong way. Yet maybe that's not a bad thing in that part of the world (niceties have gotten us nowhere in our negotiations with Islamabad). I say, hand Holbrooke more power, but keep his mandate limited--bringing the Pakistanis and Indians to the sticks of Ohio will not resolve Kashmir.
(My other concern is his habit of calling every conflict the next flashpoint that could trigger world war, from the Turkish-Kurdish conflict to the Russian-Georgian one. Last fall he even predicted that the Balkans might explode again into another sectarian inferno, or maybe just a few toughs tossing chairs at a tennis match.) For all his faults though, he may be the right man for the job, provided we know what that job is.
It's one thing for Obama not to hand the Taliban our playbook in northwest Pakistan. It's another thing to go silent when reporters ask legitimate questions about policies and predator strikes that kill innocents. Here's what I want to know: Does Obama intend to overturn the secret order issued last July by Bush allowing not just air strikes against Pakistan but also special forces raids? Moreover, every administration stretching back to JFK has sought regime change somewhere abroad--which of the world's rogue governments will Obama try to topple?
Finally, Obama should level with Americans on why he is continuing Bush's failed policies that have left scores of civilians dead (Why do we cry foul when we torture detainees but not when we kill civilians?). His advisers should sit him and down and say, Any policy that kills Pakistanis will be counterproductive. In addition, you must give a prime-time speech outlining what our aims are in Afghanistan/Pakistan and when (or under what conditions) you intend to pull US forces out. To rehash a question from the Iraq war, how do you define success? Just saying we intend to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a future terrorist launchpad for buddies of bin Laden sounds iffy and, worse, could keep us in the region for decades. That policy has "quagmire" written all over it.