BHO meet LBJ, says Juan Cole

I have been worried about Pakistan for a long time, ever since the news that the Taliban and al-Qaeda slipped across to Pakistan--perhaps even with help from the ISI.  So, misery preferring company, I always feel better whenever I read essays that point to the literal and figurative landmine that Pakistan is ....

Juan Cole, who is no half-baked character, unlike me, is an authority on the Middle East and the geopolitical complications.  His "informed comment" on the missile strike in Pakistan leads off with the following sentences:

On Friday, President Barack Obama ordered an Air Force drone to bomb two separate Pakistani villages, killing what Pakistani officials said were 22 individuals, including between four and seven foreign fighters. Many of Obama's initiatives in his first few days in office -- preparing to depart Iraq, ending torture and closing Guantánamo -- were aimed at signaling a sharp turn away from Bush administration policies. In contrast, the headline about the strike in Waziristan could as easily have appeared in December with "President Bush" substituted for "President Obama." Pundits are already worrying that Obama may be falling into the Lyndon Johnson Vietnam trap, of escalating a predecessor's halfhearted war into a major quagmire.

Lots of worrying thoughts in that piece.  Let me just highlight a couple:

The Bush administration launched 30 air attacks on targets in Pakistan in 2008, killing 220 persons. The strikes seem to have started in the summer, during the presidential campaign, about a year after candidate Obama began urging this policy. Bush may have instituted the aerial attacks to deny Obama a campaign talking point and to prevent him from out-hawking John McCain. That is, Obama may have pushed Bush -- who had earlier been wary of alienating Pakistan -- to the right. 

Cole does not tie the argument to specific dates/timeline to establish the Obama campaign talking point leading to the air attacks.  But, even if the trigger was not Obama's talking point, and even if Bush had authorized them on his own, there is no question that Obama was all in support of going into Pakistan--unilaterally--if the Pakistani government was unwilling or incapable of finishing the job.   According to a ABC report from August 1, 2007:

"I understand that President Musharraf has his own challenges," Obama said, "but let me make this clear. There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will."

 

Cole then concludes thus, and I think he is right on target (no pun intended!):

Despite the positive harbingers from Obama of a new, civilian-friendly foreign policy that will devote substantial resources to human development, the very first practical step he took in Pakistan was to bomb its territory. This resort to violence from the skies even before Obama had initiated discussions with Islamabad is a bad sign. It is not clear if Obama really believes that the fractious tribes of the Pakistani northwest can be subdued with some airstrikes and if he really believes that U.S. security depends on what happens in Waziristan. If he thinks the drone attacks on FATA are a painless way to signal to the world that he is no wimp, he may find, as Lyndon Johnson did, that such military operations take on a momentum of their own, and produce popular discontents that can prove deadly to the military mission.

This is not looking good .... I hope the President knows what he is doing, and I hope he is right on this.  If not, ... Vietnam, indeed :-(