NY Times, January 6, 2008
U.S. Considers New Covert Push Within Pakistan
By STEVEN LEE MYERS, DAVID E. SANGER and ERIC SCHMITT
This article is by Steven Lee Myers, David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt.
WASHINGTON — President Bush’s senior national security advisers are
debating whether to expand the authority of the Central Intelligence
Agency and the military to conduct far more aggressive covert operations
in the tribal areas of Pakistan.
The debate is a response to intelligence reports that Al Qaeda and the
Taliban are intensifying efforts there to destabilize the Pakistani
government, several senior administration officials said.
Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and a
number of President Bush’s top national security advisers met Friday at
the White House to discuss the proposal, which is part of a broad
reassessment of American strategy after the assassination 10 days ago of
the Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto. There was also talk of
how to handle the period from now to the Feb. 18 elections, and the
aftermath of those elections.
Several of the participants in the meeting argued that the threat to the
government of President Pervez Musharraf was now so grave that both Mr.
Musharraf and Pakistan’s new military leadership were likely to give the
United States more latitude, officials said. But no decisions were made,
said the officials, who declined to speak for attribution because of the
highly delicate nature of the discussions.
Many of the specific options under discussion are unclear and highly
classified. Officials said that the options would probably involve the
C.I.A. working with the military’s Special Operations forces.
full: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/washington/06terror.htm
---
NY Times, August 2, 2007
Obama Calls for Military Shift in U.S. Focus on Terrorism
By JEFF ZELENY
WASHINGTON, Aug. 1 — Senator Barack Obama said Wednesday that the United
States should shift its military focus away from the Iraq war to a
broader fight against Islamic extremism, vowing to dispatch American
forces to eradicate terrorist camps in Pakistan if that nation failed to
take such action.
Mr. Obama, an Illinois Democrat who is seeking his party’s presidential
nomination, said he would order strikes on Al Qaeda targets and withhold
hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid if the Pakistani
president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, did not blunt a resurging Taliban
presence in the country’s tribal areas. This, he said, is the “right
battlefield” to make the United States safer.
“If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets
and President Musharraf won’t act,” Mr. Obama said, “we will.”
full: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/02/us/politics/02obama.html
---
(Doug Henwood ferreted this out.)
Washington Post - April 29, 2007
Obama the Interventionist
By Robert Kagan
America must "lead the world in battling immediate evils and
promoting the ultimate good." With those words, Barack Obama put an
end to the idea that the alleged overexuberant idealism and America-
centric hubris of the past six years is about to give way to a new
realism, a more limited and modest view of American interests,
capabilities and responsibilities.
Obama's speech at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs last week was
pure John Kennedy, without a trace of John Mearsheimer. It had a
deliberate New Frontier feel, including some Kennedy-era references
("we were Berliners") and even the Cold War-era notion that the
United States is the "leader of the free world." No one speaks of the
"free world" these days, and Obama's insistence that we not "cede our
claim of leadership in world affairs" will sound like an
anachronistic conceit to many Europeans, who even in the 1990s
complained about the bullying "hyperpower." In Moscow and Beijing it
will confirm suspicions about America's inherent hegemonism. But
Obama believes the world yearns to follow us, if only we restore our
worthiness to lead. Personally, I like it.
full:
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20071231/000373.html
