Pentagon Takes Cue from Barack Obama, Bombs Pakistan Unilaterally

In August 2007 Hillary Clinton accused rival Barack Obama of being "naive" because he indicated that he would meet with the leaders of unfriendly nations. She claimed he was unprepared to make the tough decisions necessary to defend the United States. Sen. Obama responded that in the absence of any other options, he would bomb a country like Pakistan unilaterally if it meant eliminating a known terrorist threat. (Source: Reuters)

At the time he was hauled over the coals by Republican talking heads.

During an episode of Hannity & Colmes on August 4, 2007, Clare Booth Luce Policy Institute Fellow Kate Griffin claimed that Sen. Obama had studied at the "Jimmy Carter school of foreign policy." "That's exactly what Jimmy Carter did with the Shah of Iran," she said. "We had an ally and then they turned into our most ferocious enemy in the world. ... I'd feel sorry for Obama if this weren't so incredibly important and negligent on his part, to talk about going into a sovereign nation, invading it, basically handing the government and their nuclear arms supplies over to the ... extremist terrorists." (Video available at Brightcove.)

On August 14, 2007 the uber-conservative Hannity repeated Griffin's false talking points. According to Media Matters, Hannity "claimed that Obama has stated his 'willingness to invade an ally against their will,' referring to Pakistan. However, as Media Matters for America repeatedly noted, Obama never said he would 'invade Pakistan.' Rather, Obama stated in an August 1 speech: "If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets [in Pakistan] and President [Pervez] Musharraf won't act, we will." (Two-part video of entire interview available at Newshoundsblog: Part 1 and Part 2.)

I guess the Pentagon liked the idea.

On January 29th, the United States military implemented Barack Obama's strategy. Using good intelligence and on-the-ground cooperation by local informants, we launched a drone into Pakistan and killed a highly-place al-Qaeda leader. The U. S. did this without the cooperation of Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf. (Source: Washington Post)

Bingo! Barack Obama got it right!

Now, here's the capper!

On February 10th, eleven days AFTER authorizing a unilateral incursion into a sovereign nation without the approval of its leadership, President George W. Bush denigrated Barack Obama on national TV. He said this to Chris Wallace on FOX News Sunday: ""I certainly don't know what he [Barack Obama] believes in. The only foreign policy thing I remember he said was he's going to attack Pakistan and embrace Ahmadinejad."

Welcome to the madhouse that masquerades as American political discourse!