For the reaction of the Obama and McCain campaigns to President Bush’s announcement that some 8,000 troops will be redirected early next year from Iraq to Afghanistan, go here. Admittedly, as a McCain foreign policy adviser, I’m biased, but the Obama statement struck me as a particularly uninspiring amalgam of clichés. Herewith a few comments on his statements:
We will continue to spend $10 billion a month in Iraq while the Iraqi government sits on a $79 billion surplus
What’s the connection between the money we’re spending to fight the war in Iraq and the Iraqi oil revenues which should be used to rebuild the country? Is he suggesting that we give credence to the crackpot “war for oil” charges by taking their oil money?
In the absence of a timetable to remove our combat brigades, we will continue to give Iraq’s leaders a blank check instead of pressing them to reconcile their differences. So the President’s talk of “return on success” is a new name for continuing the same strategic mistakes that have dominated our foreign policy for over 5 years.
Obama is still stuck on the discredited theory that a timetable for withdrawal will force Iraqis to reconcile their differences. Evidence, please? In fact, the record of the past five years points in the opposite direction: When we were withdrawing our troops from Iraq’s streets in 2006, all hell was breaking loose. When we surged more troops into the streets of Baghdad and other cities, Iraqi legislators began to make progress in reconciling their differences.
What President Bush and Senator McCain don’t understand is that the central front in the war on terror is not in Iraq, and it never was – the central front is in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the terrorists who hit us on 9/11 are still plotting attacks seven years later. Today, the Taliban is on the offensive, al Qaeda has a new sanctuary, and its leaders are putting out videotapes. Yet under President Bush’s plan, we still have nearly four times the number of troops in Iraq than Afghanistan, and we have no comprehensive plan to deal with the al Qaeda sanctuary in northwest Pakistan.
Obama is right that Iraq is not the “central front in the war on terror”–anymore. It was for many years and would be today if we had not implemented the surge, which he still says he would have opposed. It was only the surge which allowed our troops to inflict crushing defeats on Al Qaeda, forcing them to shift their operations elsewhere. Now they are entrenched in the tribal areas of Pakistan.
Is Obama planning to send large numbers of ground troops to Pakistan to root them out? That would be a more militaristic approach than anything that McCain has said he would do. In fact, Obama has said nothing of the sort. Here is the sum total of his plan for Pakistan, as outlined in a July 15 speech:
We need a stronger and sustained partnership between Afghanistan, Pakistan and NATO to secure the border, to take out terrorist camps, and to crack down on cross-border insurgents. We need more troops, more helicopters, more satellites, more Predator drones in the Afghan border region. And we must make it clear that if Pakistan cannot or will not act, we will take out high-level terrorist targets like bin Laden if we have them in our sights.
Make no mistake: we can’t succeed in Afghanistan or secure our homeland unless we change our Pakistan policy. We must expect more of the Pakistani government, but we must offer more than a blank check to a General who has lost the confidence of his people. It’s time to strengthen stability by standing up for the aspirations of the Pakistani people. That’s why I’m cosponsoring a bill with Joe Biden and Richard Lugar to triple non-military aid to the Pakistani people and to sustain it for a decade, while ensuring that the military assistance we do provide is used to take the fight to the Taliban and al Qaeda. We must move beyond a purely military alliance built on convenience, or face mounting popular opposition in a nuclear-armed nation at the nexus of terror and radical Islam.
So let’s see: Obama wants to issue ultimatums to Pakistan while also tripling the aid we give it. Is that a “comprehensive plan to deal with the al Qaeda sanctuary in northwest Pakistan”? It sounds more like a contradiction in terms.
