On the issues: Revisiting Pakistan
Posted: Monday, June 16, 2008 12:09 PM by Domenico Montanaro
From MSNBC.com’s Andy Merten
With last week’s news that a U.S-led airstrike killed Pakistani troops along the Afghan border, it is worth revisiting the issue in the context of the 2008 presidential campaign. It is a topic that McCain sought to attack Obama on back in February, as he moved closer to clinching the Republican nomination.
“Will we risk the confused leadership of an inexperienced candidate who once suggested bombing our ally, Pakistan?” McCain asked an audience at his Wisconsin primary night victory party.
The following day, when asked in a press conference to elaborate on the point, McCain stood his ground. “You make plans, and you work with the other country that is your ally and friend, which Pakistan is,” he said.
McCain’s invocation of Pakistan as a campaign issue has not remained a part of his stump speech -- likely because the economy has taken center stage.
“With respect to Pakistan, I never said I would bomb Pakistan,” Obama said during an NBC News debate in February. “What I said was that if we have actionable intelligence against bin Laden or other key al-Qaeda officials, and we -- and Pakistan is unwilling or unable to strike against them, we should.”
The Bush administration has followed this path, using unmanned drone aircrafts to strike at targets believed to be al-Qaeda camps along the Afghan-Pakistan border. The McCain campaign has not come out against the practice, but it has criticized the instances in which Obama has used it as a campaign talking point.
Instances of these types of U.S.-led attacks have happened both in January of this year, and, of course, last week, when strikes reportedly killed 11 Pakistani paramilitary troops.
