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‘Iowa
picks corn, New Hampshire picks presidents,” goes the
old Granite State-boosting saying. We shall see.
But, in
the meantime, the presidential wheat is being separated
from the chaff, to change the metaphor.
And amid
the excitement of the presidential horse races, we might
pause over just one of the urgent challenges that the
44th president will confront—and sadly, in terms of
policy, there’s plenty of chaff, not much wheat.
Pakistan,
for example, is home to at least 75 nuclear weapons. It
is also a next-door neighbor to Iran and Afghanistan.
Which is
to say, it’s an important place, worthy of serious
discussion, not just cheap sloganeering. And we have
already seen the results of foreign-policy fecklessness:
the assassination of Benazir Bhutto on December 27. Her
killing was more than a tragedy; it was a blunder.
And it
was a blunder that bridged party lines. In the past few
months top Republicans and Democrats in the executive
and legislative branches had reached a seeming consensus
on
Pakistan
policy: praise Bhutto and root for her political
comeback, while demanding that President Pervez
Musharraf allow “free elections.”
Yet,
nobody in Washington seems to have thought through the
basics of this policy. For example, was Bhutto in any
way capable of carrying out the pro-American policies
she pledged while swanning her way through the salons of
Manhattan and
Georgetown?
And of
course, nobody here thought through how to keep her safe
there.
Now
Bhutto is dead, Musharraf is still in charge, and who
knows about the next election? Can there even be an
election in a country perpetually on the brink of civil
strife, maybe even civil war?
But in
the meantime, leading
US
presidential candidates continue to talk big, as if
recent events demonstrate just how easy it is for
America to have its way in Pakistan.
First,
during the ABC News Democratic debate on Saturday night,
Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico said he would ask Musharraf to “step aside,” assuring the obviously
skeptical moderator, Charles Gibson, that “we have the
leverage to do that.”
Now we
might ask: How would President Richardson pull off that
kind of leveraging? The Pakistanis treasure their
independence as much as we do; one of the reasons they
built all those A-bombs is that they were tired of being
pushed around by foreigners.
Richardson
may think that issuing public orders to foreign leaders
will get him votes in America, but Americans might think
about the whirlwind to be reaped in response to
presidential braggadocio on foreign policy.
Second,
over on the Republican side, Sen. John McCain of Arizona
said on Sunday night’s Fox News debate that he would
“get” Osama bin Laden: “I know how to get him, and I
will get him.”
When
pressed as to “how” by moderator Chris Wallace, McCain
stuck to his guns, repeating his pledge.
A
President McCain would certainly need guns, lots of
them. Because, not surprisingly, such tough talk is not
well received in Pakistan, where bin Laden is believed
to be hiding. The headline in Monday morning’s Pakistani
newspaper Dawn, reacting to earlier reports of Bush
administration covert-operation plans for Pakistan,
declared bluntly: “Islamabad says US military not
welcome.”
“Getting” bin Laden, wherever he might be, is a
legitimate goal for America—and has been for six
years—and so it would be nice, for a change, to see some
genuine “command focus” on that objective.
But
while nobody can doubt McCain’s personal courage or
dogged determination, we still must ask: Would a
President McCain—or any next president—fully mobilize
America for a possible confrontation with Pakistan, on
top of our existing commitments and conflicts?
Specifically, Americans should wonder: Is our military
big enough? Are we adequately monitoring the movement of
Pakistanis into the United States?
And, oh
yes, how are we doing on missile defense? |
