Silly Barack, Bin Laden is for Grown-Ups

Dear Barack Obama,

I like you, and I may support you for President someday, but not this go-round. You have more book-learning than many of your opponents. But today, you proved to me that you lack the necessary real-world experience, by raising the specter of US troops on Pakistani soil.

President Musharraf's regime is poised on the edge of a knife. On one side he is undermined by the Pakistan People's Party composed of ethnic Sindh's led by Benazir Bhutto (widely believed to have been corrupt both times she was Prime Minister of Pakistan), and on the other by a collection of Islamofacist parties openly sympathetic with al-Qaeda. In the middle is the Pakistani military led by Musharraf, trying to keep Pakistan together.

At the same time, we have a nuclear arms standoff between Pakistan and India. Yes, Barack, both countries have already built and tested nuclear weapons. They even got close to having a war which might have gone nuclear, when Islamofacists based in Pakistan bombed the Indian Parliament a few years ago.

Now it may be that one of the things that keeps the Islamofacists from gaining enough sympathizers to topple Musharraf's government (and take possession of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal) is that, so far, Musharraf has managed to keep massed US troops from crossing into Pakistan. You have just signaled that in an Obama administration, this might no longer be the case.

Even the mere talk of US military incursions into Pakistan by a candidate for US President might have potential to destabilize Pakistan. Such destabilization could lead India (in an attempt to pre-empt a nuclear attack by a new Islamofacist regime) to try to sieze Pakistan's nuclear weapons. The Islamofacists, knowing that they cannot prevail against India in a conventional conflict, might opt to use their new nuclear weapons, rather than let India take them away. In other words, your remarks may court the possibility of igniting a regional nuclear war.

Your are correct to note that the Pakistani army has been unable to control Pakistan's mountainous Northwest Frontier Provinces and Federally Administered Tribal Areas where Bin Laden and company are widely suspected to be hiding out. But no army in history ever has.

So maybe we could get Bin Laden if we sent troops into Pakistan, and maybe we couldn't. But one thing is clear: all hell might break loose if we tried it. The irony of it is that, in a manner of speaking, Bin Laden (if he is there, if he is even still alive), may be hiding under Pakistan's nuclear umbrella.

If you want to get the al-Qaeda senior leadership thought to be in Pakistan, Barack, then you had better have a really good, well thought out plan, not based on book learning, but on ground truth knowledge. You would also do well to make sure they are really there. And it would be best to keep quiet about it.