Tough Talking Obama: Reactions
The Chicago Sun Times reports that other Democratic hopefuls for the nomination have come out swinging at Barack Obama's threat to carry out unilateral military strikes against Pakistan if he felt like it needed to be done.
Dodd and Biden overtly criticized Obama as the primary heats up.
"It is dangerous and irresponsible to leave even the impression the United States would needlessly and publicly provoke a nuclear power," Dodd said.
"We find it a little disingenuous that Sen. Obama is hailing this as a new bold initiative," said Biden's campaign manager, Luis Navarro.
The Bush administration is concerned about destabilizing the Musharraf regime. "We think that our approach to Pakistan is one that not only respects the sovereignty of Pakistan as a sovereign government, but is also designed to work in a way where we are working in cooperation with the local government," said White House spokesman Tony Snow, reacting to Obama's speech.
Meanwhile, over at the New York Post, Peter Brooks points out that Obama's "bold, new initiative" is precisely what George W. Bush has been saying all along - only without any respect for the sovereignty of other nations. Ones that happen to have nuclear weapons.
First, there was little new in Obama's proposition for fighting al Qaeda. In fact, he might be alarmed to learn that he's basically taken a long-standing page from the Bush administration's playbook in the War on Terror.
President Bush has already made it clear on numerous occasions that he'd do what whatever was necessary to kill or capture al Qaeda operatives - especially the likes of Osama bin Laden - if we had actionable intelligence to do so.
But an attack on Pakistan's terrority that isn't unauthorized by that nation's government - which is what Obama seemed to be suggesting - is a pretty risky proposition, especially if it involved a large number of U.S. troops pouring over the Afghan border into Pakistan.
Taking this sort of large-scale action - or any other unilateral action - without prior consultation with Islamabad could easily lead to the downfall of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's government.
Highly amusing. I suspect Obama will begin fading in the polls now. He's managed to do the exact opposite of what the vociferous left has demanded while not really impressing anyone in the middle.
By s.ahmadi, Thursday, 2 August , 2007 @ 7:53 am
I must say that your commentary on the Obama speech is terribly inadequate. Have you read or seen the speech? Dodd and Biden would have loved to have delivered the speech. They are reactly negatively because what else can they do. To anyone who is objective and who has actually read and watched Obama’s speech, it was a powerful speech.
By FedUp, Friday, 3 August , 2007 @ 2:48 pm
Yeah… powerful… it got Pakistan’s attention and they are NOT impressed! It doesn’t say much for biden and Dodd either.
By dvl, Friday, 3 August , 2007 @ 4:03 pm
saw a bumper sticker you’d love today Clinton/Obama 08 “Madam President..get used to it” thought you’d get a chuckle out of that….