I’m a fan of the morning Michael Smerconish show, if not always of his politics. Smerconish has been beating the drum for a change in the Bush administration policy of hands-off the Osama bin Laden sanctuary in Pakistan. According to Smerconish, there has only been one question in the debates of both parties about going after bin Laden, and that was not by the media. The candidates themselves offered little or nothing of their own on how they felt about the Pakistani sanctuary. Smerconish tried to get administration spokesman Tony Snow to tell us why we’ve "outsourced" the capture of bin Laden to the Pakistanis. Snow, once a respected journalist who at one time would have asked the question himself, has been turned into just another smooth-talking flack. Tony tried to snow Smerconish, who was having none of it.
I cite this background because, while Smerconish was on vacation, a wondrous thing happened. The Democratic candidate who has been criticized as inexperienced and na�ve single-handedly made the capture of bin Laden part of the political dialogue. You can disagree with Barack Obama all you want, but please don’t call him na�ve again. It’s the "na�ve" Obama who alone among the major candidates was against our ill-fated Iraq adventure before it began. Now it is Obama alone who is tackling the forgotten issue of our national debate, the Pakistan safe haven we have allowed the mastermind of 9/11.
Last week Obama issued a warning to the Pakistani government: If we obtain actionable intelligence about where bin Laden is plotting his next act of terrorism against the United States and Pakistan doesn’t act, we will. This is something George W. Bush should have made our policy from the beginning, but it was this administration that allowed bin Laden to escape from Tora Bora and it is this administration that continues to allow him sanctuary in Pakistan in the name of protecting the fragile government of President Pervez Musharraf.
Obama’s strong stance caught the competition flat-footed. His two major opponents, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, issued statements that seemed to agree with Obama. Obama’s comment forced the Republican candidates in Sunday’s debate to tell us if they would continue to allow bin Laden safe haven. Out of the three leading Republicans, only Rudy Giuliani seemed prepared to do so, and he seemed hesitant at first when replying to the question.
Obama has deflected questions about his lack of experience by claiming his foreign policy instincts are better than the other candidates. He has a good argument.
It is far from certain Musharraf would be toppled and replaced by Islamic fundamentalists if the United States was forced to act. In fact, if we invade the northern sanctuary of bin Laden, it might provide cover for Musharraf, who is politically too weak to do it himself. If Musharraf is so weak our unilateral act would result in his fall, then perhaps we should realize it is not in our power to prop him up indefinitely either.
Obama has not been perfect. He has not done as well as Hillary in the debates if you are to believe the national polls. And I am not trivializing his lack of experience, after all, it was the inexperienced governor of Texas who got us into this mess in the first place. But those of us who lived through the Kennedy presidency are not going to make a god of experience either. JFK was led into the Bay of Pigs fiasco early in his administration, not by his inexperience, but by relying too much on the so-called experts in the Pentagon and CIA. It was his advisers, like the CIA’s Allen Dulles and Lyman Lemnitzer of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who fed the lie to Kennedy anti-Castro Cubans could, without the help of United States firepower, overthrow Fidel Castro. Kennedy found out to his chagrin he had been had. The CIA and the Joint Chiefs knew the operation would fail without U.S. support, but figured once the invasion began they could force JFK to cave. Kennedy angrily refused to get America involved for fear it would provoke Soviet retaliation. He also thought such an invasion would earn us the hatred of Central and Latin America and ruin his Alliance for Progress initiative. JFK had learned a valuable lesson the tough way: Experience is no substitute for the right instincts.
In spelling out what he would do to get bin Laden, Barack Obama showed us he has the right instincts.
