WASHINGTON - US Senator Barack Obama, a
leading candidate in the race for the Democratic
presidential nomination, said on Tuesday he would
make Afghanistan the focus of US anti-terror
efforts and unilaterally strike terrorist targets
across the border in Pakistan if the government of
President General Pervez Musharraf failed to do
so.
In a major policy address delivered at
the Woodrow Wilson International Center for
Scholars, Obama, who currently trails his chief
rival, Senator Hillary Clinton, in public-opinion
polls, sharply
criticized President George W
Bush's anti-terrorism campaign, charging that "he
is fighting the war the terrorists want us to
fight".
"Bin Laden and his allies know
they cannot defeat us on the field of battle or in
a genuine battle of ideas," he declared. "But they
can provoke the reaction we've seen in Iraq: a
misguided invasion of a Muslim country that sparks
new insurgencies, ties down our military, busts
our budgets, increases the pool of terrorist
recruits, alienates America, gives democracy a bad
name, and prompts the American people to question
our engagement in the world.
"By refusing
to end the war in Iraq, President Bush is giving
the terrorists what they really want, and what
Congress voted to give them in 2002," he said in
one of several reminders that Clinton voted to
authorize military action, "a US occupation of
undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with
undetermined consequences."
Obama also
called for doubling US foreign aid and credits to
poor countries to US$50 billion a year by 2012 to
"roll back the tide of hopelessness that gives
rise to hate", including $2 billion for a Global
Education Fund to counter "the radical
madrassas" (seminaries) in the Islamic
world.
The speech comes amid an ongoing
squabble between Obama and Clinton - who together
hold a clear lead in the crowded field of eight
candidates vying for the Democratic nomination -
over the advisability of meeting with hostile
leaders, such as Iranian President Mahmud
Ahmadinejad or Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez,
without preconditions.
Clinton had
denounced Obama's statement during a debate last
week in favor of doing so as "irresponsible and
frankly naive", a criticism that has since been
used by Obama to assail Clinton as "Bush-Cheney
lite", a theme he pounded - albeit without naming
Clinton - in his remarks.
"It's time to
turn the page on the diplomacy of tough talk and
no action," he said. "It's time to turn the page
on Washington's conventional wisdom that agreement
must be reached before you meet, that talking to
other countries is some kind of reward, and that
presidents can only meet with people who will tell
them what they want to hear."
Both
candidates have been harshly critical of Bush's
conduct of the Iraq war and voted last week to
support legislation that would have required the
president to withdraw all US combat troops by
March 31, while retaining a residual force to help
train Iraqi forces, protect US installations and
personnel, and conduct operations against al-Qaeda
in Iraq, although Obama on Wednesday suggested
that troops deployed for the latter purpose would
be based "in the region", presumably not
necessarily in Iraq.
The continued US
troops presence in Iraq, he said, actually
enhanced al-Qaeda's appeal and "ending the war
will help isolate al-Qaeda and give Iraqis the
incentive and opportunity to take them out".
Bush, he said, has in any case exaggerated
the threat posed by al-Qaeda in Iraq while
overlooking the "people who hit us on [September
11, 2001], who are training new recruits in
Pakistan", which, along with Afghanistan in his
view, required much greater attention and
resources.
"As president, I would deploy
at least two additional brigades [about 6,000
troops] to Afghanistan to reinforce our
counter-terrorism operations and support NATO's
efforts against the Taliban," he said, adding that
he would demand that Washington's North Atlantic
Treaty Organizations partners do the same.
At the same time, he said he would
increase non-military aid to Afghanistan by US$1
billion - about 75% more than the Bush
administration has requested for 2008.
"As
[September 11] showed us, the security of
Afghanistan and America is shared," he said. "And
today, that security is most threatened by the
al-Qaeda and Taliban sanctuary in the tribal
regions of northwest Pakistan," which he called
"the wild frontier of our globalized world".
In addition to deploying more troops to
Afghanistan, Obama called for a much tougher
stance on Pakistan.
"As president, I would
make the hundreds of millions of dollars in US
military aid to Pakistan conditional, and I would
make our conditions clear: Pakistan must make
substantial progress in closing down the training
camps, evicting foreign fighters, and preventing
the Taliban from using Pakistan as a staging area
for attacks in Afghanistan," he said.
Moreover, "If we have actionable
intelligence bout high-value terrorist targets and
President Musharraf won't act, we will," he
stressed in a key passage that, according to one
analyst, Greg Sargent of Talkingpointsmemo.com,
appeared "designed to shore up whatever weaknesses
Camp Obama thinks may or may not have been created
by the Hillary dust-up" over talks with hostile
leaders.
Obama also argued that Pakistan
should be pressed both to increase development and
social assistance to the border areas that,
according to a recent National Intelligence
Estimate by the US intelligence community, have
become safe havens for the Taliban and al-Qaeda,
and to hold free and fair elections.
He
also called for strengthening US military and
civilian counterinsurgency capacities and building
an "international intelligence and law-enforcement
infrastructure to take down terrorist networks
from the remote islands of Indonesia to the
sprawling cities of Africa", to which the US
should contribute $5 billion over three years.
"This effort," he said, "will focus on
helping our partners succeed without repressive
tactics, because brutality breeds terror, it does
not defeat it."
In that connection, Obama
said he would "reject torture without exception",
observe the Geneva Conventions, close the
detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and
end illegal wiretapping of US citizens.
In
addition to doubling non-military aid to
developing countries, he said he would also launch
new public-diplomacy efforts designed to "make
clear that we are not at war with Islam".
Too often since September 11, he said,
"the extremists have defined us, not the other way
around".
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