Juan Cole has written an article worth reading over at Salon.com, about the possible negative effects of Obama’s decision to bomb inside the territory of Pakistan. The most important bit:
The Pakistani government is now ruled by the largely secular, left-of-center Pakistan People’s Party, and President Asaf Ali Zardari blames the Taliban for the assassination of his wife, Benazir Bhutto, late in 2007. Any dispute between Islamabad and the Obama administration centers on issues of national sovereignty, not on the question of whether the Taliban should be crushed. Pakistan’s own military is also fighting the Pakistan Taliban Movement and its tribal supporters. Early last week, Islamabad’s Frontier Corps pounded several villages of the Mohmand Agency, killing 60 militants. In the course of the past five months, Pakistani military operations against the Pakistani Taliban in the neighboring Bajaur Agency have left hundreds dead and hundreds of thousands homeless and displaced.
The risk Obama takes in continuing the Bush administration policy of bombing Pakistani territory is provoking further anger in the public of that country against the United States and harming the legitimacy of Zardari’s fragile elected government. A Gallup poll done last summer found that 45 percent of Pakistanis believe that the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan poses a threat to their country. Of Pakistanis who expressed an opinion on the matter, an overwhelming majority believed that the cooperation between the U.S. and the Pakistani military in the “war on terror” has mainly benefited Washington. If a more muscular American policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan sufficiently angers the Pakistani public, they could start voting for religious parties, delivering a nuclear state into the hands of Muslim fundamentalists.
The fundamentalist Jamaat-i Islami (JI), led by Qazi Husain Ahmad, held a rally of several thousand protesters in the Pakistani capital on Friday to protest the drone attacks and the ongoing military campaigns in FATA. (I saw the demonstration on satellite television, and it was clearly bigger than the wire services reported.) The coalition of religious parties of which the JI formed part was dealt a crushing rejection by the Pakistani electorate last February, but for the U.S. to continually bombard Pakistani territory could be a wedge issue whereby they return to political influence. Whereas the Jamaat-i Islami had welcomed Obama’s new path in the Muslim world before the strikes, the JI leader blasted the new president in their aftermath.
Read the whole article.
Cole reinforces my previously mentioned sense that continued Predator drone (or any other sort of U.S.) attacks on Pakistan will enhance the likelihood that the country will further radicalize, and collectively turn against us. If a change-promising liberal Democrat in effect continues the policy of the extremist far-right Bush — asserting the right to violate Pakistan’s territorial integrity at will, raining Hellfire missiles on houses, killing women and children — why would any rational Pakistani have any reasonable hope for improved relations with the U.S.? For an end to war and conflict in the region?
I would be very disturbed if control of the government of Pakistan moved from a center-left secular party strongly dedicated to stopping the Taliban to a right-wing political Islamic party with ties to (or sympathy for) the Taliban. In my view, every Hellfire missile — and every dead civilian — we deliver is a huge propaganda gift for the latter radical forces, and a blow to those forces within the country who should most naturally be our strongest allies.
And when we discuss Pakistan we must always remember the stakes: Pakistan is a nuclear power. If we regard a bunch of religious radicals with box cutters to be serious terrorist threats — as we rightly should — what then of a radicalized nuclear power?
First of all, I hear some knee-jerk demonization of Obama in this post, and I just want to push back a little bit.
Obama did promise change. He also said quite clearly during his campaign that if he located Al Qaida targets in Pakistan and the Pakistani govt wouldn’t act, Obama would. So the sentence “If a change-promising liberal Democrat in effect continues the policy of the extremist far-right Bush — asserting the right to violate Pakistan’s territorial integrity at will, raining Hellfire missiles on houses, killing women and children — why would any rational Pakistani have any reasonable hope for improved relations with the U.S.? For an end to war and conflict in the region?” is utterly misleading.
The idea that “rational” Pakistanis were expecting Obama to do something other than what he is doing just doesn’t make any sense, when Obama explicitly campaigned to do what he is now doing. It may be that the “extremist far-right Bush” followed a policy that Obama is now following — but it doesn’t follow that Obama’s actions reflect an “extremist far-right policy.” Your intention seems to be to characterize Obama as an extreme right-winger, but of course that reflects your perspective from the far left more than it reflects the spectrum of political debate in this country. When you use this sort of hyperbolic language to describe policies that are actually quite mainstream, you’re just crying wolf — and nobody will take you seriously when an honest-to-God extreme right-winger takes power again. I’m not opposed to criticisms of Obama’s policies, but when we argue that Obama, the newly-elected Democratic President of the United States, an extreme right-winger, we only marginalize ourselves.
Furthermore, I would hope that a “rational” Pakistani would accept the idea that Taliban forces are at war with the democratically-elected government of Pakistan — with one side of this conflict favoring a return to the medieval treatment of women and a religious orthodoxy that will only bring more conflict and misery to the country, and another side representing a secular, democratic way forward. This “rational” Pakistani doesn’t like it when women and children are killed, but understands that the U.S. forces weren’t targeting the women and children, but were instead targeting legitimate enemies of the U.S. and the Pakistani government.
The idea that a “rational” Pakistani would see these unfortunate deaths as a reason to join in a movement to overthrow the Pakistani government and install an extremist government doesn’t make sense to me.
Here is the situation in Pakistan: The legitimate government there is at war with the Taliban. As Cole’s article says, “In the course of the past five months, Pakistani military operations against the Pakistani Taliban in the neighboring Bajaur Agency have left hundreds dead and hundreds of thousands homeless and displaced.”
This level of suffering at the hands of the Pakistani government undoubtedly threatens the country’s stability, but the government under Zardari is nevertheless continuing this war, presumably because permitting the Taliban to continue represents an even greater threat to the country’s stability.
Clearly, the Obama administration is allied with Zardari and shares his desire to crush the Taliban. Perhaps you are correct that U.S. missile attacks within the country should cease, as the political damage done to Zardari from continuing U.S. attacks outweighs the benefit in terms of fighting the Taliban.
That leaves us with two options: Do we disengage from the region altogether? Or do we use other means to support Zardari — do we, for example, continue selling him weapons, offering him assurances that we will not allow the Taliban to take over the country, etc?
What if we disengage, and then the Taliban manage to overthrow Zardari and install a new government? Then we will have a “radicalized nuclear power,” as you put it. Are we confident that Zardari can fight this battle without our help?
More broadly: What outcome is acceptable to us in Pakistan, and how do we acheive this outcome? I certainly agree with you and Cole that U.S. attacks inside Pakistan are a risk, but what course of action doesn’t entail risks?
I would argue that it isn’t extreme right-wing ideology and alterior motives that drives Obama’s foreign policy, but rather a sense that American security depends on a certain outcome in Pakistan. Obama’s approach to the country may be incorrect, but it’s not clear what the correct approach is.
Comment by Ian — January 26, 2009 @ 7:02 pm
Another question: Cole’s article seems to suggest that withdrawing from Afghanistan would help Zardari secure his country. But what if we withdraw from Afghanistan, the Taliban take over, and then foment resistance to Pakistan’s government? Isn’t there a risk that if we pull out of Afghanistan, the Pakistan government’s enemies will grow in strength?
Comment by Ian — January 26, 2009 @ 7:10 pm
If you wrote a post in 2003 saying that George Bush is responsible for launching unjust/unncessary wars and creating a disastrous torture regime and so on, and someone accused you of “knee-jerk demonization” of Bush, you would rightly say: no, I’m not demonizing him; I’m correctly describing his bad policies and opposing them.
When I say that Obama is continuing Bush’s policies and that no rational Pakistani can expect improved relations with the U.S. so long as the bombing continues, I’m doing the same. The question of right and left is significant in my post only to the degree that there is complete agreement on all sides of the mainstream ideological spectrum about the doctrine that the U.S. has the right to bomb where we want, when we want, without the permission of the bombed nation (with which we’re not at war).
In short: it’s not that Obama is “being right-wing” when he bombs Pakistan at will; it’s that even self-described liberals are okay with this sort of bombing, apparently. In light of this fact, what ordinary Pakistanis might decide is that there is no political change that could happen in Washington that would change this practice, which they hate. The result, which Cole I think accurately describes: “for the U.S. to continually bombard Pakistani territory could be a wedge issue whereby they [JI] return to political influence.”
You’re completely correct that any rational Pakistani ought to have expected the bombings to continue. Thus, when “the Jamaat-i Islami had welcomed Obama’s new path in the Muslim world before the strikes” they were being irrational: irrationally optimistic, irrationally excited by all the talk of “change” and “hope,” thinking that talk would translate to a change of American policy for them and their country. Instead, they should have listened more carefully to what Obama said explicitly during the campaign: that he would bomb inside Pakistan when he deemed it necessary, with or without Pakistan’s approval.
I oppose this bomb-at-will policy and support instead much more active diplomatic and nonmilitary fiscal aid involvement by the U.S. The project of building an better future society in Pakistan and Afghanistan (and the U.S. for that matter) is a long-term, energy-intensive, fragile process much of which has to take place internally. That process can be instantly reversed by a single American bomb. I don’t believe we can bomb our way to security.
Comment by Lee — January 27, 2009 @ 2:32 am
My point is not that you can’t criticize Obama. My point is that in comparing Obama to Bush the way you do, you are implying that you see no significant difference between them — that Obama’s talk of “change” was really just intended to dupe the American people into electing him, and now that he’s elected he’ll continue the “extreme far-right” policies of Bush because Obama is secretly an extreme right-winger. Which is nonsense. You see “complete agreement on all sides of the mainstream ideological spectrum” because you’re measuring that spectrum according to an extreme far-left position that you happen to hold — but there are significant differences along the ideological spectrum. The fact that most liberal Americans want the United States to continue going after Al Qaida shouldn’t be taken as some horrible scandal when that very policy has been expressed by politicians on the left for years.
It isn’t your main point that I meant to criticize in my comment above — it’s your rhetoric, which suggests you intend to take all the rhetorical firepower you levelled at Bush and now fire all that at Obama, as if he’s no different from Bush. To describe Obama’s policy as a “bomb-at-will” policy is unfair to Obama; it suggests Obama isn’t being careful and responsible in these bombings. You can disagree with Obama, but you’re trying to make him sound irresponsible and crazy.
You write, “Thus, when “the Jamaat-i Islami had welcomed Obama’s new path in the Muslim world before the strikes” they were being irrational: irrationally optimistic, irrationally excited by all the talk of “change” and “hope,” thinking that talk would translate to a change of American policy for them and their country.”
You would have less sympathy for the Jamaat-i Islami if you knew more about them. Their struggle is not “rational”. The “rational” thing for them to do would be to give up the fight. The “rational” thing for them to do would be to let women go to school.
Are you saying that under no circumastances can the use of the United States military be productive and/or positive?
Comment by Ian — January 27, 2009 @ 11:47 am
I just want to be clear about what I’m saying: I’m prepared to believe you are absolutely correct when you argue that American bombings inside Pakistan are actually making the American people less safe rather than more safe. Your argument — that these bombings may make the current Pakistani government less popular and make it more likely that radicals will take over the country — makes sense.
But to suggest that Obama is a fraud because he campaigned on “change” and “hope” and “a new way forward” and is now continuing these bombings isn’t fair to him. You seem to be suggesting that the problem here is the American bombings — that if these bombings go away, then the “rational” Pakistani will have “reasonable hope for improved relations with the U.S.” and ”an end to war and conflict in the region.”
But I’m not convinced that this is the right way to think about what is going on there. The Pakistani government seems to have pretty good relations with the U.S., in that both the Pakistan government and the U.S. want to crush the Taliban. And the Taliban are committed to resisting the progressive Pakistan government, American bombings notwithstanding. So the question remains: Are we willing to allow a radical Islamic government in Pakistan? And if not, what should our strategy be? What if “much more active diplomatic and nonmilitary fiscal aid involvement by the U.S.” isn’t enough? If we try that approach and it doesn’t work, then will we be forced to resume the bombing?
Comment by Ian — January 27, 2009 @ 1:35 pm
I certainly don’t mean to suggest that Obama’s a “fraud.” Like I said, I think he was very open and honest in the campaign. He was very open about his priorities and what he would do when in office.
I do think some people might have come to incorrect conclusions on the basis of what are essentially campaign slogans. Hope and change are campaign slogans. Was John McCain against hope and change? No, he just hoped for different outcomes — “victory” in Iraq — and different sorts of changes — and end to torture, yes, and also an increasing ‘marketization’ of health and education.
I have no particular sympathy for Jamaat-i Islami — in fact my whole post was based on the assumption that I didn’t want them to gain more power in Pakistan — but Cole writes that before the bombing they had “welcomed Obama’s new path in the Muslim world.” If bombings of this sort become a regular activity — or if there is a particularly gruesome mistake, leading to huge numbers of civilian casualties — I suspect lots of ordinary Pakistanis who previously had no sympathy for JI might eventually come to find something appealing about their message. Which is sad, because it’s preventable.
Comment by Lee — January 27, 2009 @ 5:13 pm
I think your main point is absolutely crucial. The goal is to keep extremist Islamist factions from taking over Pakistan — as this will represent a threat to the security of the United States and to everyone in that region of the world.
Whenever there is a bombing that kills innocent people, there is a cost. Presumably somebody somewhere in the US government thought there was also a benefit to this particular bombing, or else the government wouldn’t have gone forward with it. But what is this benefit? What has the bombing accomplished? On the one hand, we are obligated to demand answers to these questions. One way to force the government to provide more information about the benefits of such an attack is to confront the U.S. govt with the costs. And the costs you and Cole lay out in the post above are significant.
Comment by Ian — January 27, 2009 @ 5:41 pm