Obama the Hawk

Lest you think he was too much of a peacenik:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Wednesday that he would possibly send troops into Pakistan to hunt down terrorists, an attempt to show strength when his chief rival has described his foreign policy skills as naive.

The Illinois senator warned Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf that he must do more to shut down terrorist operations in his country and evict foreign fighters under an Obama presidency, or Pakistan will risk a U.S. troop invasion and losing hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid.

You know what they say: if it walks like a hawk and it talks like a hawk, it's probably a hawk.

This is a really weird move for Obama. He's not going out-run Hillary to the war-mongerer side of things, and he's really much more of a socialist than she is. The republicans are never going to vote for either of them, but if I read the democratic base correctly, Obama is more liked. He comes across as the more liberal of the candidates, and rightfully so. I don't really understand this move to the center, though this testifies to the strength of the military industrial complex. Even when polls demonstrate that at least seventy percent of Americans are fed up with the war in Iraq Obama is not eliminating the possibility of going after... Pakistan.

Which is odd if one knows anything about Pakistan. And though I don't, Justin Raimondo does:

The Pakistanis seem honestly shocked that their imperial overlords in Washington are ready to turn on them so quickly. As Pakistan's foreign minister put it to CNN's Wolf Blitzer: "People in Pakistan get very upset when, despite all the sacrifices that Pakistan has been making, you know, you have the sort of questions that are sometimes asked by the American media." The question being asked is: what side are the Pakistanis on?

Here is a government that has captured more al-Qaeda leaders than all the Western intelligence agencies combined, a government that has stood by the U.S. since Day One of the post-9/11 era, a government that is now being swamped by growing anti-American sentiment and religious fervor. After all that, how can the Americans possibly doubt Musharraf's loyalty?

During one of the debates, Ron Paul, echoing Ronald Reagan, noted that we don't understand the irrationality of middle eastern politics. The Pakistanis can't understand the irrationality of American politics. Neither can I.