Thursday 2 August 2007

Obama threatens Pakistan over al-Qaeda

It seems Barack Obama is getting overly feisty in his efforts to get himself the Democrat ticket.

Talking about possible terrorist targets in Pakistan he said: "If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will,"

Nice to know how concerned he is over national sovereignty. He’ll play along giving it lip service - as long as he can get his own way. But if he is baulked then an act of war is presumably not out of the question.

Pakistan’s President Musharraf has certain difficulties dealing with al-Qaeda and Taliban militants in areas bordering Afghanistan. They are wild and in many respects virtually autonomous, controlled by tribes.

I hope Mr Obama is only trying to sound tough and hoping this will play to the domestic hawks, but the fact is President Musharraf has been a key US ally in it’s ‘war on terror’ since 9/11 and this is the thanks he gets.

Obama’s grandstanding makes him look pretty feeble to his own people and doesn’t seem likely to exactly strengthen his hand domestically.

It is also enough to make everyone else think twice. On the face of it Obama seems to think, if the rest of the world doesn’t jump when he says frog then some ass kicking ‘military intervention’ may be in order.

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