Keeping a Pakistan Campaign Pledge

President Obama seems ready to deliver on a threat Candidate Obama made over two years ago--that, if Pakistan doesn't go after its terrorists, he will.

The Surge in Afghanistan, according to White House leaks, comes with "a fairly bald warning that unless Pakistan moved quickly to act against two Taliban groups they have so far refused to attack, the United States was prepared to take unilateral action to expand Predator drone attacks beyond the tribal areas and, if needed, to resume raids by Special Operations forces into the country against Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders."

In August 2007, then-Sen. Obama took flak for saying what the Bush White House was dancing around in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border areas:

“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 Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will.”

Pervez Musharraf, who bilked Bush for American billions without delivering on promises to go after those terrorists, is gone now, but the Pakistani military is still playing the same shell game, and one element of the new Afghanistan policy is to squeeze them into delivering more results for the new $7.5 billion they will be getting over the next five years.

Ever since bin Laden escaped into Pakistan eight years ago, the US has pursued a so-called “hammer and anvil” strategy to crush militants in the border areas. Until now, the American hammer in Afghanistan has been pounding against what our frustrated military calls "a Pakistani pillow, not an anvil."

The crucial results of the Afghan Surge will come less from the visible escalation there but from what happens under the radar in the arm-wrestling with a nuclear-armed, politically shaky Pakistan government that Barack Obama foresaw long before he moved into the White House.

Crossed Fingers for Afghanistan

For the crisis du jour, the mode is ultra-cautious optimism as we tiptoe deeper into the Afghan-Pakistan quagmire with an infusion of 4,000 more military trainers along with civilian advisers.

The President's announcement today will put the bravest face on it, but the shadow of Iraq will be in the picture. An expert once described the war there as playing three-dimensional chess in the dark but that looks more like checkers compared to this. (See the gung-ho Long War Journal for a sampling of the daily reality.)

David Brooks comes back from his guided tour today "skeptical but also infected by the optimism of the truly impressive people who are working here," a non-sequitur after his gloomy assessment of the situation:

"Afghanistan is one of the poorest, least-educated and most-corrupt nations on earth...It has powerful enemies in Pakistan, Iran and the drug networks working hard to foment chaos. The ground is littered with the ruins of great powers that tried to change this place.

"Moreover, we simply do not know how to modernize nations. Western aid workers seem to spend most of their time drawing up flow charts for each other. They’re so worried about their inspectors general that they can’t really immerse themselves in the messy world of local reality. They insist on making most of the spending decisions themselves so the 'recipients' of their largess end up passive, dependent and resentful."

Add to this an intractable culture of corruption that has made the US-backed Karzai government shaky and the uncertainty of Pakistani support in the tribal regions despite our billions of aid to their government, and the questions of what we're doing there, for how long and with what prospects of success add up to another possible Iraq with more at stake and even less hope of disentanglement.

The Neo-Cons were criminally naïve about the Middle East, but it's hard to see much improvement in the "new" approach.

Toothpaste-Tube Terrorism

Squeeze them out of Iraq, and they squirt into Afghanistan and Pakistan tribal areas. What's clear is that the Bush-McCain mantra of "fight them there [Iraq] so we don't have to fight them here" has turned out to be an oversimplification of the war on terror the US will be fighting through the next Administration and beyond.

This week, A US Marines commander reported his troops have killed 400 insurgents in southern Afghanistan since late April, and visiting Congressmen were told the Bush administration is "recalibrating operations in the region because of a 40 percent increase in violent attacks against US-led forces in Afghanistan that have pushed US casualties for the month of June beyond the monthly toll in Iraq."

Today's New York Times adds, "The swelling forces of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters in Pakistan’s border region pose a grave threat to American and NATO troops in Afghanistan...More than a thousand Pakistanis have been killed in terrorist attacks in the past year, mostly in the border areas where radical Islamic fighters are strongest."

After being bilked out of $7 billion in military aid with no security gains to show for it by Pervez Musharraf, our post-Bush policy for Pakistan may be starting with proposed legislation by Senators Joseph Biden and Richard Lugar to provide up to $15 billion in aid over the next 10 years for economic development, health and education and strengthen the civilian government "to regain control over a military that has too often been a law unto itself and intelligence services that seem far more loyal to the extremists than their own government."

In any case, the new tenant of the White House next January will have to rethink the war on terror by bringing in the best brains available as opposed to the Bush-Cheney we-know-best approach that took four years to discover the man who wrote the book on counterinsurgency, Gen. David Petraeus, might have something useful to offer in Iraq.

The Way We Live Now

Beyond the headlines, we occasionally get "soft" news about how the post-9/11 world really is, as we do today in disturbing narratives about the unseen wars in Iran and Pakistan--patterns of secrets and lies that Americans and their representatives in Washington either don't know or want to talk about publicly.

In the New Yorker, Seymour Hersh details a new "major escalation of covert operations against Iran...designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership" as part of a literal tug of war in the White House and Congress on how to deal with the nuclear threat from Tehran.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reports "a secret plan to make it easer for the Pentagon’s Special Operations forces to launch missions into the snow-capped mountains of Pakistan to capture or kill top leaders of Al Qaeda," a plan that exists only on paper as a result of Washington indecision and in-fighting.

Until the Bush Administration departs next January, it will be easy enough to blame all this dangerous confusion on their certified bunglers, but how well will successors of either party in a country that prides itself on government transparency be equipped to navigate this shadowy world of shifting alliances among violent splinter groups?

In Iran, the M.E.K., which has been on the State Department’s terrorist list for a decade, is receiving arms and intelligence, from the US, a Pentagon consultant tells Hersh, even though "its leaders are thought to have been lining their pockets for years" and "it is almost useless for the purposes the Administration intends.”

In Pakistan, after being swindled by Pervez Musharraf for years, the US wants to be more aggressive in going after terrorists there but, according to the Times, "With Qaeda operatives now described in intelligence reports as deeply entrenched in the tribal areas and immersed in the civilian population, there is also a view among some military and CIA officials that the opportunity for decisive American action against the militants may have been lost."

Meanwhile, Hersh tells CNN, Congress has authorized up to $400 million to fund the secret campaign in Iran, which involves US special operations troops and Iranian dissidents.

As the Bush Administration tries to throw "Hail Mary" passes before it leaves the field and the candidates confidently promise new approaches to dealing with terrorism, there is a sinking feeling that this is the way we are going to be living for a long, long time.

Mission Creep in the Middle East

John McCain's hyperbole about keeping troops in Iraq for a hundred years is alarmingly echoed in a Washington Post OpEd by one of the saner foreign policy experts on the Washington scene.

"What the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan have in common," Anthony Cordesman writes, "is that it will take a major and consistent U.S. effort throughout the next administration at least to win either war.

"Any American political debate that ignores or denies the fact that these are long wars is dishonest and will ensure defeat. There are good reasons that the briefing slides in U.S. military and aid presentations for both battlefields don't end in 2008 or with some aid compact that expires in 2009. They go well beyond 2012 and often to 2020."

Only seven months ago, Cordesman was pointing out that some recent advances in Iraq were the result of “sheer luck,” such as Sunni tribesmen turning against Al Qaeda insurgents and quoting a U.S. official as describing our situation as "three dimensional chess in the dark while someone is shooting at you."

Rejecting the extremes of staying the course or immediate withdrawal, Cordesman made a case then for phasing down troop levels starting early this year. Now, another trip to Iraq and Afghanistan has persuaded him that "these are wars that can still be won" if we stay another decade or more.

Does the word quagmire ring a bell? In 1968, Richard Nixon promised to end the war in Vietnam and stayed another five years before accepting a humiliating defeat.

Now, once again, we are testing our will in places thousands of miles away against antagonists who are willing to do anything for as long it takes to get control of their own territory.

We started out to remove Saddam Hussein and the Taliban, a mission that has morphed into policing the entire Middle East, with Pakistan and Iran next on the horizon. Can Cordesman and John McCain explain how we do that without breaking our military and busting the budget?

Betting on a Dead Horse, Again

Political chaos in Pakistan could bring nuclear headaches for the US, and what our government is doing to prop up a failing regime recalls efforts three decades ago on behalf of our old ally, the Shah of Iran.

The McClatchy Newspapers report: "The Bush administration is pressing the opposition leaders who defeated Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to allow the former general to retain his position, a move that Western diplomats and U.S. officials say could trigger the very turmoil the United States seeks to avoid.

"U.S. officials, from President Bush on down, said this week that they think Musharraf, a longtime U.S. ally, should continue to play a role, despite his party's rout in parliamentary elections Monday and his unpopularity in the volatile, nuclear-armed nation."

Pressuring the newly elected anti-Musharraf majority to retain our iffy friend may turn out to be the kind of mistake we made in the late 1970s on behalf of the Shah before and after he was deposed in Iran. Despite Jimmy Carter's misgivings, he was persuaded by Henry Kissinger and his oil friends to let the old US ally come here, which resulted in occupation of the American Embassy in Tehran for 444 days and the ongoing hostility with Iran.

President Bush has reacted to the Pakistan elections with a wishful observation that "it's time for the newly elected folks to show up and form their government, and the question then is, will they be friends of the United States, and I certainly hope so."

Behind the scenes, however, the White House is urging the newly elected Pakistanis not to reinstate the judges Musharraf ousted last year, who would likely try to remove him from office--a strategy that veteran State Department officials feel could backfire.

But not to fear, Henry Kissinger is still around to give the Administration the benefit of his wisdom and is helping John McCain with foreign policy advice.

What could possibly go wrong?

President Obama Strikes Pakistan

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.

Musharraf Marches On

A year from now, when Bush is gone, what will President Clinton, McCain or Obama do about our most annoying ally, Pervez Musharraf?

Here he is today, sashaying around Paris with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, pooh-poohing the notion that capturing or killing Osama bin Laden is of any importance in the war on terror and insisting that Pakistan is as stable as a rock.

His 100,000 troops on the Afghan border are not "trying to locate Osama bin Laden and (Ayman-al) Zawahri, frankly," Musharraf tells a conference at the French Institute for International Relations. "They are operating against terrorists, and in the process, if we get them, we will deal with them certainly."

As for the instability that led him to declare a state of emergency only weeks ago, Musharraf is sanguine. "I can assure you that nothing will happen in Pakistan," he says. "We are not a banana republic."

We have heard these songs before and, after years of being euchred out of $100 million by the Pakistani President's shell game without finding out where his nuclear weapons are, even the Bush Administration is catching on.

The State Department's counterterrorism chief is complaining about "gaps in intelligence" about the activities of extremist groups in the tribal regions.

"We don't have enough information about what's going on there. Not on al-Qaeda. Not on foreign fighters. Not on the Taliban," he says.

Our next President's priority will be picking a Secretary of State who will stop buying Musharraf's song and dance and make sure we get what we are paying for in Pakistan.

Deadly Politics in Iowa and New Hampshire

In today's world, very little can be called "unseemly," but the candidates' reaction to the death of Benazir Bhutto might give pause to even the most jaded observer.

It's hard to tell tone from news reports, but the responses of Obama and Clinton seem unfeeling at best, while Giuliani's New Hampshire co-chairman is right there to 9/11 her death with the claim that only his man has "the knowledge and judgment to attack one of the most difficult problems in current history. And that is the rise of the Muslims...(W)e need to keep the feet to the fire and keep pressing these people until we defeat them or chase them back to their caves, or in other words, get rid of them."

Par for the Giuliani course, but the Washington Post headline reflects no credit on the Democrats: "Clinton, Obama Seize on Killing."

Politics ain't beanbag, but neither is it prissy to be repulsed by the rush to tie an assassination to experience and womanhood on the one hand, and an opponent's vote to go to war in Iraq on the other. Even George Bush had the restraint to limit his first reaction to shock and a determination to track down the people behind the killer.

"While aides said Clinton was anxious not to appear to be politicizing Bhutto's death," the Post reports, "they nonetheless saw it as a potential turning point in the race with Obama and former senator John Edwards."

Edwards meanwhile was touting his phone call to Pakistan President Perez Musharraf, urging him "to continue on the path to democratization."

What to do about Pakistan is going to be high on the next President's agenda, but a little mourning might be in order before seizing on a violent death to turn the issue to political profit in Iowa.

Mrs. Bhutto

As inured as we may be to the flow of bloody news from that part of the world, the death of Benazir Bhutto comes as a shocking reminder of how deeply involved we now are in places where murder is part of the political process.

How will her assassination affect our own debate about dealing with a post-9/11 world in which our "friend" Pervez Musharraf promises to protect us from terrorists and is unable or unwilling to prevent such suicide attacks in his own country? How safe can we feel about a nuclear Pakistan so vulnerable to the will of extremists for whom killing is a form of religious and political expression?

Our own candidates, from the safety of Iowa and New Hampshire, will no doubt say all the right things about how tough, realistic and determined our policies should be in the face of this kind of reality. But how much more can they do than the clueless Bush Administration has done in protecting us from it?

Nuclear Hide-and-Seek

It keeps getting worse. Now we learn our government has given Pakistan $100 million and a "raft of equipment" to safeguard nuclear weapons since 9/11, but we have no idea whether any of it helped because they won't show us where or how what we gave them is being used.

Beleaguered President Musharraf says Pakistan's nuclear controls are "the best in the world" but won't reveal location of the weapons or the amount or type of new bomb-grade fuel his country is now producing.

After six years of secrecy, the Bush Administration is now starting to worry that Musharraf's "Trust me" on the nukes may be no more reliable than his assurances about fighting terrorists on the Afghanistan border.

The New York Times now admits it "has known details of the secret program for more than three years, based on interviews with a range of American officials and nuclear experts, some of whom were concerned that Pakistan’s arsenal remained vulnerable," but delayed publication when the Bush Administration "argued that premature disclosure could hurt the effort to secure the weapons."

In retrospect, there might have been some value in going public with the internal debate that pitted atomic scientists who favored technical sharing against the State Department, which prevailed by ruling such transfers were illegal under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Harold M. Agnew, a former director of the Los Alamos weapons laboratory, says reluctance to share warhead security technology was making the world more dangerous. “Lawyers say it’s classified,” he told the Times. “That’s nonsense...You want to make sure that the guys who have their hands on the weapons can’t use them without proper authorization.”

Now we are faced with the nightmare of nuclear weapons that are who-knows-where and protected who-knows-how in an unstable nation whose leading scientist was once selling its technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea.

John E. McLaughlin, a former deputy director of the CIA who played a crucial role in stopping that proliferation, now says, “I am confident...the Pakistanis are very serious about securing this material, but also that someone in Pakistan is very intent on getting their hands on it.”

Friends, Foes and Who Knows?

The Musharraf Mess should remind Presidential candidates and voters that we are not living in Bush World any more, where other countries are either allies or enemies, good or bad guys to whom we either send tons of money or bunker-busting bombs.

Belatedly, the Administration is leaking word that they have doubts that Musharraf "can survive in office and have begun discussing what might come next."

Lesson #1 for the next President: If your foreign-policy people take five years to discover a not-very-subtle military dictator has been blowing smoke about his dedication to democracy and playing us for saps about opposing Islamic extremists, you need a whole new State Department and CIA. Or if they have been doing their jobs and nobody around you has been listening, you are surrounded by the wrong people.

Lesson #2: When an iffy ally like Musharraf is sitting on a stockpile of nuclear weapons, you don't want to wait until he is on the way out to start finding out where those weapons are, who controls them and reaching out to those who do.

Lesson # 3: Have all the photo ops you want with the Saudis, Iraqi Sunnis and al-Maliki's mob, but keep a close eye on what they are doing when there are no lights and cameras.

In a world where foreign relations have morphed from checkers to three-dimensional chess, the next White House is going to need a new generation of policy makers and analysts who can see beyond the outdated clichés of the Kissingers, Brzezinskis and Podhoretzes.

Voters should be looking for clues about candidates who understand that.

Nuclear Shell Game

If we had a competent, open-minded and subtle Administration, the questions of what to do about Pakistan would still be dicey. As things stand, our clueless President, out-of-it Secretary of State and politically damaged diplomatic corps seem like rubes at the fair watching Musharraf run his games of repression and promises of free elections with no idea of where the nuclear pea is.

Nightmares that Pakistan might "lose control over a nuclear arsenal of uncertain size--estimated at from 55 to 115 weapons," the New York Times reports, are driving fears in Washington, London and Paris.

The Pakistan president has insisted his nuclear controls are "the best in the world," but, over the years, his assurances about everything have turned out to be full of empty bluster and, now that his control of the country is shaky, can we take the chance of believing him?

In a situation like this, it would be comforting to think that US intelligence assets have some answers but, even if they do, with our "What, me worry?" President and Vice President surrounded by Neo-Cons obsessed with Iran's nuclear potential, is anybody in charge of the titrating of carrots-and-sticks financial aid, covert actions and contingency planning that are needed?

"If General Musharraf is overthrown," the Times reports, "no one is quite sure what will happen to the team he has entrusted to safeguard the arsenal. There is some hope that the military as an institution could reliably keep things under control no matter who is in charge, but that is just a hope.

“'It’s a very professional military,'” said a senior American official who is trying to manage the crisis and insisted on anonymity because the White House has said this problem will not be discussed in public. “'But the truth is, we don’t know how many of the safeguards are institutionalized, and how many are dependent on Musharraf’s guys.'”

In a situation where "don't know" and "hope" could lead to disaster, the track record of this White House is not reassuring. From the outside, it looks as if regime change in Washington is more urgent than in Islamabad.

The Nation as Head Case

Joe Lieberman and Frank Rich agree about something: America is mentally ill.

"We are a people in clinical depression," Rich writes in his New York Times column today. Sen. Lieberman dissents slightly, saying it is only Democrats who are “politically paranoid.”

Depressed or paranoid, according to the good doctors, we have to pull up our socks and get our heads straight.

But our mood disorder may be more like the "national malaise" Jimmy Carter diagnosed, which lifted as soon as he left the Oval Office.

After seven years of Bush-Cheney syndrome, who wouldn't be more than a little crazed? At Johns Hopkins University the other day, Dr. Lieberman presented “a case study in the distrust and partisan polarization that now poisons our body politic on even the most sensitive issues of national security.”

The Bush-Cheney quack cites "wild conspiracy theories" of left-winger bloggers that the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment was an excuse to attack Iran. After Iraq, he contends, only mad people could suspect that.

More evidence of political derangement, from the other direction, is Rich's equating the Democrats' confirmation of Martin Mukasey as Attorney General with what Pervez Musharraf is doing in Pakistan.

Rich, normally a voice of reason, goes off the rails today asserting that Sens. Schumer and Feinstein were "willing to sacrifice principles to head off the next ticking bomb" in approving Mukasey without his condemnation of waterboarding in a way somehow parallel to Musharraf's power grab in Pakistan.

Metaphors can stretch only so far without getting nutty. The Administration's madness should not become a contagion that keeps critics from making the distinction between the repression of a dictator and a political compromise over starting to undo some of Bush's damage to the US Justice Department.

That way lies madness.

From MAD to Madness

Pakistan could make Iran look like small potatoes. President Musharraf's move to seize emergency powers and crack down on opposition has opened a Pandora's box of potential nuclear threats in the Middle East too numerous and ugly to be covered by Joe Biden's characterization as "complicated stuff" in last week's Democratic debate.

"The United States has given Pakistan more than $10 billion in aid, mostly to the military, since 2001," the New York Times notes. "Now, if the state of emergency drags on, the administration will be faced with the difficult decision of whether to cut off that aid and risk undermining Pakistan’s efforts to pursue terrorists--a move the White House believes could endanger the security of the United States."

Even worse is the prospect, however remote, of Pakistan imploding from the dueling corruption and incompetence of Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto to be replaced by Muslim extremists who would then control the nation's nuclear weapons. Is that something the US, India or Israel could live with?

We never got a straight story about Pakistan’s leading nuclear scientist selling technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya even while Musharraf's hold on power was firm. Can we be sure that terrorists won't be able to get what they want in a shaky Pakistan?

In the last century, nuclear conflict was averted by the MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) Doctrine that deterred two superpowers from using such weapons without annihilating each other. But in a world where they may become available to groups of suicidal zealots who believe they will be rewarded in an afterlife for destroying those who don't share their beliefs, MAD could rapidly give way to madness.

In World War III or IV, depending on which Neo-Con is doing the numbering, what do we do about that?

Warriors for Peace

Children are supposed to be guileless enough to speak truths that adults are too compromised to tell. But on going to war with Iran, retired soldiers are taking the lead.

Last weekend, Gen. Wesley Clark wrote a Washington Post OpEd warning against the folly of attacking Iran, as the Bush Administration is clearly preparing to do.

Now another retired military leader, Gen. John Abizaid, who headed Central Command for almost four years, speaks out.

"There are ways to live with a nuclear Iran," Abizaid yesterday told the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank. "Let's face it, we lived with a nuclear Soviet Union, we've lived with a nuclear China, and we're living with (other) nuclear powers as well."

The General was referring to such countries as “axis of evil” member North Korea and unstable ally Pakistan. But the Bush-Cheney Neo-Cons are beating the drums for an urgent war against Iran just as they did against Iraq five years ago.

Some years ago, someone I knew was planning a picture book titled “They Must Know What They’re Doing or They Wouldn’t Be Where They Are,” featuring the designer of the Edsel, LBJ directing the war in Vietnam and other perpetrators of huge follies.

The Bushies have earned their place in that volume and, before they can repeat their performance in Iran, Gen. Abizaid has some common sense to impart:

“I believe the United States, with our great military power, can contain Iran...can deliver clear messages to the Iranians that...while they may develop one or two nuclear weapons they'll never be able to compete with us in our true military might and power.”

What we need now are politicians who are as dedicated to peacekeeping as the men who were trained to make war.

Breaking the Bush-Obama Language Barrier

Ten days ago, Barack Obama said this about Pakistan: “If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will.”

He was pooh-poohed by Tony Snow and called naïve, dangerous and irresponsible by candidates of both parties. Mitt Romney said, “He’s gone from Jane Fonda to Dr. Strangelove in one week.”

Today President Bush, asked what he would do in Pakistan, answered: “I'm confident that with actionable intelligence we will be able to bring top Al-Qaeda to justice. We're in constant communications with the Pakistan government...And I'm confident, with real, actionable intelligence, we will get the job done.”

There is no daylight between these two answers except that Bush is taking Musharraf’s acquiescence for granted and is ducking the possibility that he “won’t act.”

But two week ago, his homeland security adviser Frances Townsend didn’t. She told Fox News that, beyond working with Musharraf, we were ready to take additional measures.
"Just because we don't speak about things publicly doesn't mean we're not doing things you talk about," Townsend said, when asked why the U.S. does not conduct special operations and other measures to cripple Al Qaeda. "Job No. 1 is to protect the American people. There are no options off the table...No question that we will use any instrument at our disposal."

A week earlier she expressed “frustration” with Musharraf to the New York Times, which reported that “there was growing concern that pinprick attacks against Al Qaeda targets are not enough, but that some new American measures might have to remain secret to avoid embarrassing General Musharraf.”

So Bush’s policy, translated from Texan, is that, if Musharraf won’t act, we will. He just uses more words than Obama.

If Jane Fonda won’t explain all this to Mitt Romney, maybe some Administration Dr. Strangelove will.

Distorting Obama's "Inaugural Address"

At the invitation of Lee Hamilton, one of the nation’s wisest elders, Barack Obama made the speech of his life today, one that presages what he might say as President in January 2009. Typically it was mined for a media headline and reduced to: “Obama Might Send Troops Into Pakistan.”

Speaking at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, whose director of Middle East Studies is in a Teheran prison, Obama laid out a foreign policy that projects the use of U.S. military strength and diplomacy in a way that would reverse the bluster and bungling of the Bush-Cheney Administration.

He began with an indictment: “After 9/11, our calling was to write a new chapter in the American story. To devise new strategies and build new alliances, to secure our homeland and safeguard our values, and to serve a just cause abroad. We were ready. Americans were united. Friends around the world stood shoulder to shoulder with us...

”We did not finish the job against al Qaeda in Afghanistan. We did not develop new capabilities to defeat a new enemy, or launch a comprehensive strategy to dry up the terrorists' base of support. We did not reaffirm our basic values, or secure our homeland.

”Instead, we got a color-coded politics of fear. Patriotism as the possession of one political party. The diplomacy of refusing to talk to other countries. A rigid 20th century ideology that insisted that the 21st century's stateless terrorism could be defeated through the invasion and occupation of a state. A deliberate strategy to misrepresent 9/11 to sell a war against a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.”

From there, Obama proposed in detail a new approach to “stop fighting the war the terrorists want us to fight” and “wage the war that has to be won, with a comprehensive strategy with five elements: getting out of Iraq and on to the right battlefield in Afghanistan and Pakistan; developing the capabilities and partnerships we need to take out the terrorists and the world's most deadly weapons; engaging the world to dry up support for terror and extremism; restoring our values; and securing a more resilient homeland.”

As President, Obama promised to remove troops from Iraq and put them "on the right battlefield," sending at least two more brigades to Afghanistan and increasing nonmilitary aid by $1 billion as well as initiate a three-year, $5 billion program to share intelligence with allies to take out terrorist networks from Indonesia to Africa.

In Pakistan, he said, “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 Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will.”

Obama’s speech is sure to generate criticism from other Presidential contenders and ridicule from commentators and bloggers as a ploy to one-up Hillary Clinton in their squabble about talking to enemies.

But, prepared with the best foreign-policy advice he could get, it is a serious statement by a serious man that should go far to ease voter qualms about his lack of experience or possible softness as Commander-in-Chief.

If the critics have substantive counter-arguments, let’s hear them. Invective won’t cut it.

Where Terrorists Could Go Nuclear

Our “vital ally in the War on Terror,” as President Bush describes Pakistan, is on the brink of a crisis that could make Iraq look like a Sunday picnic.

To stabilize his situation, President Pervez Musharraf is negotiating a power-sharing arrangement with former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who is taking a hard line about her return from self-imposed exile, insisting that Musharraf give up control of the army that brought him to power.

"The Red Mosque was just a warm-up for what will happen if the religious schools are not disarmed," Bhutto said this week about the recent bloody occupation in Islamabad, adding that Islamist extremists plotting the overthrow of Musharraf's government had converted madrassases into military arsenals.

All this unrest and uncertainty comes amid the Bush Administration’s increasing doubts about Pakistan’s role in rooting out Al Qaeda and the imminent passage by Congress of an aid bill that would be tied to Pakistan’s progress in cracking down on terrorist safe havens.

Add to this volatile political mixture Pakistan’s possession of nuclear weapons, and it may soon make our worries about Iraq and Iran look simple by comparison.

Bush and bin Laden in Hiding

The melodrama is in its final act, and we still don’t know if it ends with a whimper or a bang. Dubya is in a bunker, beleaguered by the demons he set loose here and abroad. Osama is in hiding too, and for all we know, may be dead.

On Meet the Press, the director of national intelligence, Admiral Mike McConnell points out “it’s been a year” since there was a confirmed sighting of bin Laden: “There are rumors about his illness...I believe he is in the tribal region of Pakistan, and...only speaking to a courier, staying completely removed from anything we could exploit to find him.”

Bush is more visible, literally, but he too is in hiding--from Congressional investigators closing in on his Administration’s criminality and the growing pressure to change course in Iraq.

The Bush bang, impeachment, is unlikely even though there is growing talk of it. Osama’s crisis is clearly coming as an American consensus builds for going into Pakistan to get him.

But even as Bush and bin Laden decline, the damage they have done is all over the political landscape. The next election and the next phase of terrorism won’t change the heightened fear and distrust they created.

We can’t board a plane, go to a stadium or walk a crowded street feeling as safe as we did because of bin Laden. But, instead of giving us back some of our pre-9/11 sense of security, Bush took away more of it--we can’t assume that whoever we elect won’t break the law, spy on us or send young people to die half a world away without our consent.

The next President will not only have to end the war in Iraq but find ways to rebuild the political system that worked for more than two centuries and use it to counter terrorism rather than just speechify about it to win elections.

With any luck, when they look back at Bush and bin Laden, future generations will wonder how bad actors could have held the stage so long.