Actually Obama was right when he said he would send forces into Pakistan if we found out that Osama or other leading terrorists were there.

He is the only presidential candidate to answer that question correctly.

The war on terrorism can only be fought if we are willing to wage war where the terrorists are. The Pakistani government is not doing anything in its outerrmost regions to help us. And almost all clues point to Pakistan as the location of the worlds most dangerous terrorist leaders.

A president may not need to memorize all the names of all the leaders of countries in the world so long as he can remember what is important and not attack countries that did not attack or seriously threaten us. In fact lots of people get paid lots of money to remember mundane things like names so our decision makers can concentrate on policy and geo political stratagies.

Unfortunantly our current resident in the oval office cannot remember names or formulate competent policy and stratagy.

It's worth pointing out that the US has conducted several major air strikes inside Pakistan in recent years, which have been only partially hushed up by Pakistan's government. These were undertaken with help from Pakistani intelligence. In one case, agents thoughtfully kidnapped and executed a journalist who had breached the security cordon on one of the blast sites.

Nick you are scary. Not only do you approve of bombing suspected terrorist sites (who cares about collateral damgage) you consider that option "correct" as though it was as proven a fact as knowing the name of the leader of Pakistan. In fact you considered the fact of bombing a nation as an even more unquestioned fact, knowing the name of the leader of the nation you want to bomb is unimportant trivia to you.

Osama bin Laden also felt it was correct to bomb the nation trying to destroy his way of life. How are you different? I suspect bin Laden at least knows the names George Bush and Pervez Musharraf.

I'm going to agree with Nick, and thank Greenwich for pointing out what people who discuss the Obama\Pakistan issue constantly fail to bring up.

Conducting quick airstrikes or special forces missions is about as much as I can support us doing militarily against terrorism. This is why I think Obama has a decent enough grasp of the situation - you don't invade countries that don't threaten us, you speak with international leaders to legitimize your actions and reach consensus, and you attack terrorists abroad with surgical strikes aimed at the leadership.

JW that was the Clinton approach. I will assume you were happy with it. It certainly saved American soldier lives in contrast to invasion. But it costs a lot of money to bomb people halfway around the world. Are the billions spent on that really the best use of that money? Don't we have domestic crime, immigration and health issues right here which are more pressing?

When we just bomb, the lack of blood, prisoners and gory news footage just doesn't satisfy conservative war hawk types. And I can't believe the peaceniks sleep better at night knowing we bombed Serbia or a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory or some Afghan camps. So who benefits?

Um it appears all the board experts overlooked the fact Pakistan is a NUCLEAR POWER and might get pissed off enough to use their Nukes against ANY INSANE COUNTRY or Presidential candidate that wants to bomb or invade them (OBAMA). Doesn't that dumbass know what MAAD stands for?

It depends what you're trying to achieve.

Half the world's population is not happy with the country it has been assigned to.

The list is endless: kashmiris in India, tamils in sri lanka, tibetans and uighurs in china, baluchis in pakistan, kurds in iraq and turkey. In africa, most people have far more loyalty to their tribe than to their country.

The only way some countries can keep themselves intact is to breach the rights of individuals. Saddam Hussein's police state in Iraq was an extreme example of this.

Is a country that has to torture and kill innocent people to stay intact actually worth preserving? Or should we admit that these countries - almost always colonial inventions - simply don't work?

Greenwich - take a look at whats happening in Darfur, what happened in Bosnia, what happened in Rwanda, and then you'll see what happens when we "admit that these countries...simply don't work." People die, in huge numbers. In the past, it wasn't a big deal because the weapons weren't sophisticated enough or as widely available. Groups now have huge access to arms that they can turn against both government troops and civilians, making large scale massacres much more efficient.

To suggest that we throw our hands up and say "well the regimes are bad, might as well let them kill each other" is a moral outrage.

Bsharp: Yep, that was the clinton approach. The only problem with it (in retrospect), is that it didn't utilize intelligence enough, wasn't prosecuted as vigorously, and that public opinion turned sour. As for money... well, the alternative here is to invade and occupy countries, which is just as expensive as it is a bad idea. We also need to up our cooperation with our allies, Nato, and the UN about tenfold to cast a wide and diverse umbrella over antiterror efforts - if done right, that can be the best bang for our buck.

No, war hawks won't be satisfied, which is why I waste my time in person and here on slate futilely trying to explain to people that the war on terror needs to be fought intelligently rather than with brute strengh. Good luck with that.

Yes domestic issues matter, but we can't ignore international crisis, especially if we have now more or less crossed the Rubicon on defining our international goals as being security-stability based.

Clyde: For now, Pakistan is an ally and has (de-facto) allowed us to bomb their territory. Musharraff has recently come round to publicly admitting that al-qaida is a big problem in his ungovernable region. Obviously, we need to work with the government to legitimize any military action, which we could be doing a better job of. Point being, Pakistan isn't going to attack us, and the only way their nukes will be a threat to us is if radicals get ahold of one.

bsharporflat:

Nick you are scary. Not only do you approve of bombing suspected terrorist sites (who cares about collateral damgage) you consider that option "correct" as though it was as proven a fact as knowing the name of the leader of Pakistan. In fact you considered the fact of bombing a nation as an even more unquestioned fact, knowing the name of the leader of the nation you want to bomb is unimportant trivia to you.

Osama bin Laden also felt it was correct to bomb the nation trying to destroy his way of life. How are you different? I suspect bin Laden at least knows the names George Bush and Pervez Musharraf.

bsharpoflat,

It does not apper that you understand what the post said. It is not important for a presidential candidate to memorize the names of every leader of every country on the planet. It would be a terrible waste of ones time and memory resources. A president can easily turn to an aide and request a refresher on anything he needs, particularly the name of a president of another Country. Life is not a Geography exam.

That you cannot tell the difference between blowing up a hut that contains Osama Bin Laden or the taliban leader Omar, and carpet bombing an entire nation speaks all that is necessary to reply to your post.

But I guess you would be happy to put your head in your sand trap and pretend that these terrorists would never want to stike us again if we just pretended they did not exist. You need to realize that while the war in Iraq was a stupid folly, the war agianst the people who murdered thousands of your fellow citizens is one we cannot back away from and indeed is one that our president refuses to fight.

I know you will not answer this question but I will ask it anyway. If someone horribly burned and crushed most of your family to death and vowed to kill the rest of your family as soon as he possibly could, and they had the means to do so, would you not want your government to do what it takes to stop them from killing the rest of your family? If that someone was in the process of planning to finish killing you and the rest of your family and friends and they were coming at you with a bomb would you not want that person stopped?

Or would you happily thump your chest in rightful indignation about your concern for the bombers friends and accomplices who have been aiding and abetting his bomb making abilities and providing him with food and shelter? I imagine that would make you feel good as Osama slaughtered the rest of your children as you gleefully remembered the name of the president of Potsalwherever.

If Bush had done what needed to be done four and five years ago the war on terror would have been over and won. Sometimes you do have to fight for what is right and there is nothing scary about defending your family and your country.

I agree. I belatedly supported the invasion of Iraq on precisely those grounds.

You wrote: "You need to realize that while the war in Iraq was a stupid folly, the war agianst the people who murdered thousands of your fellow citizens is one we cannot back away from and indeed is one that our president refuses to fight."

Nice to see somebody else point out what I've been screaming for years now -- that the war in Iraq is Bush's way of NOT fighting the men who launched 9/11, but instead taking on what he THOUGHT was an easy victory to embellish his 2004 campaign with an easy victory. None of this had anything to do with what foreign leaders names Bush did or did not know; it had everything to do with the fact that he has no conception of what war and foreign policy are about, and was advised by men whose conceptions of these things were flawed by their ideology.

The whole business about "foreign policy experience" is all a bunch of crap anyhow. The problem with the men who advised Bush is not what they knew, but what they did with that knowledge. Donald Rumsfeld surely knew, when he began denouncing "Old Europe," that he was foreclosing any hope the United States might have had of serious international assistance in fighting terrorism. It wasn't ignorance that made him say this, but hubris. When it became clear that the United States would not be able to win a military victory in Iraq on its own (with the small amount of assistance that Rumsfeld/Bush WERE able to muster), that same hubris made him (and Bush) unwilling to try to rework the war into an international project -- again, because of hubris. They were unable to admit error, and thus had to choice but to remain stuck in a losing war.

Obama (and Edwards, too) do NOT seem to be people who are controlled by their need to appear flawless. (I wish to God I could say the same about Hillary.) On the Republican side, if anyone removed the hubris from Rudy Giuliani he would collapse into a puddle.

I don't wish to comment on the ultimate point of your post. But that's a lousy analogy. I assume you're trying to talk to Americans about the "American family", but it's certainly not the case that Bin Laden killed most Americans on 9/11/01.

Clyde, Pakistan is a nuclear power, but only because India is one, too. They have neither the desire nor the ability to deliver a nuclear weapon any farther away than next door. The real, abiding threat regarding both of those countries is that both have considerable tactical nuclear weapons, and could engage in a nuclear war within minutes, just about any time. In their case, mutually assured destruction is considerably more assured than elsewhere. This isn't a fire on which we need to be pouring gasoline, but the question is whether taking out AQ installations in pakistan makes the Indian Subcontinent more or less stable. I would vote for "more," but I'd hold my breath doing it.

Good point. Yugoslavia and India are also great examples of people forced to live together by armies and dictatorships. When Tito died it became inevitable that Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia would split up into their tribal regions. The only question was how painful it would be. India and Pakistan split in one of the bloodiest periods of the century and that is going some in a pretty bloody 100 years.