Obama invasion

Speaking at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars, Senator Barack Obama made a startling revelation about the Western badlands of Pakistan

there are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again.

Yikes! No shit?

He must be speaking to Democrats, I mean who else on Earth is unaware of this fact?

And what would Obama do about this?

"If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President [Pervez] Musharraf won't act, we will," he said...

Now it sounds to me like Senator Obama is saying this as if this would be something new in his Administration. In fact, US forces used "actionable intelligence" many times in the past to strike within Pakistan's Waziristan area.

One such time January 17th of this year

The target of the air strike in Waziristan was a training base for fighters loyal to a pro-Taliban militant leader called Baitullah Mehsud, according to intelligence officials.

In January of 2006 we also struck, trying to get Zawahiri

Ayman al-Zawahiri -- Osama bin Laden's right-hand man in the al Qaeda terrorist network -- was the target of a CIA airstrike Friday in a remote Pakistani village and may have been among those killed, knowledgeable U.S. sources told CNN.

We didn't kill him, but we tried. And we used actionable intelligence. And these are not the only events, though there haven't been many of them.

But it seems that the Presidential hopeful wants go way beyond these precision strikes

"When I am president, we will wage the war that has to be won," he told an audience at the Woodrow Wilson Center. "The first step must be to get off the wrong battlefield in Iraq and take the fight to the terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan."

Now a battlefield in Pakistan is a horse of a different color. Not only is it difficult logistically without Pakistan's help but wouldn't an invasion of Pakistan be unilateral?

And this isn't something a President could do by himself. I mean this kind of commitment would require authorization by Congress.

You know, like the one President Bush got for Iraq.

In fact, Obama being a Senator and all, could write an authorization to invade Waziristan today, and iff approved, the President would have to execute it. Why doesn't he do that?

But the questions remain. Would President Obama try to get sanctions from the UN first?

You know, like President Bush did with Iraq?

Of course such a move would piss off the only nuclear Islamic nation on Earth who has been an ally by most accounts.

Bush only pissed off a thug dictator who already hated us and wanted us dead.

I don't know. I mean I genuinely like the idea of cleaning out Waziristan if we could get Pakistan on board. But the getting out of Iraq part is problematic.

This is because in order to separate the civilians from the combatants, you have to rely on the good will of the people in the area. And you have to build trust and you have to assure them that you will protect them from reprisals if they tell us who the bad guys are.

And what kind of trust capital will we have if we have just been seen to leave our Iraqi allies twisting in the Islamist wind?

How does that work.

And not just in Waziristan, who anywhere in the world will trust the word of our soldiers when they know that fickle politicians really decide their fate?

I would not put it past Democrats to authorize such a war, and then start going all anti-war once a Republican gets in charge.

Or things just start getting tough.