Pakistan Foreign Minister weights in on Obama speech

Pakistan's Foreign Minister Khusheed Kasuri today commented on Obama's speech, which apparently warned of unilateral action against terrorists in his country.

"It's a very irresponsible statement, that's all I can say," he said in a television interview. "As the election campaign in America is heating up we would not like American candidates to fight their elections and contest elections at our expense."

There has been no clarification of Obama's stance and indeed the campaign has reiterated their statements in an email broadcast to supporters yesterday.

It's hard to argue now with those asserting that Obama is building up a clear policy of foreign intervention, based on the idea of "U.S. interests." To his statements on Pakistan, one must add his comments that he would consider unilateral military intervention to stop nuclear proliferation in Iran and North Korea made in the journal Foreign Affairs.

Even if this is just posturing it threatens to tear down bridges made with moderate elements in the Muslim world. Together with Tom Tancredo's statements about nuking the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, it can only fortify perceptions of American arrogance and "manifest destiny," even though Obama yesterday swore off using nukes against terrorist targets much less holy sites .

Al-Qaeda and Taliban recruiting only goes up when they can broadcast media reports of this type of U.S. military interventionist thinking without respect to borders or international law.

Realize that the situation in Pakistan is very tenuous. Al Qaeda and the Taliban are not simply confined to the border areas with Afghanistan. The most recent evidence of this was the mosque standoff right in the capital of the country, indeed within walking range of President Pervez Musharraf's own office. There have been two nearly successful assassination attempts on Musharraf's life.

Unfortunately, it's much harder to see now the "clash of civilizations" ending any time soon regardless of what administration comes to office unless Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul or Ralph Nader can pull off an election miracle.

The thing is with the exception to those two intervention caveats, Obama's foreign policy speech and Foreign Affairs article, would tend to agree with the idealistic vision of the author of "Dreams from My Father."

Many of us hoped that the son of a Kenyan Muslim father, partially raised by an Indonesian Muslim stepfather, both of whom were secular and non-religious, would be able to span the lacuna created by extremists in both the East and West.

But those two caveats are like elephants that can't be ignored. They swallow up the rest of what Obama has stated and make it impossible for advocates of peace to truly know where he's coming from. And I'm not just talking about absolute pacifists. Even those who agree with the use of military force for purposes of national defense, meeting defense treaty obligations or combating international terrorism, have to be worried about such openly interventionist statements.

Even conservatives talk eloquently about peace. But it's often those little caveats that they later use to build a case for war.

Obama must clarify his position on international law and the sovereignty of nations.