During the campaign, it was hard to nail down Obama's position on Pakistan. His refrain was that he would act on actionable intelligence were Osama bin Laden to be located within Pakistani borders, if the Pakistani government refused to. At the time, American troops were getting in firefights with the Pakistani military over their incursions across the border in pursuit of Taliban fighters. Despite this, there remained the possibility that the Pakistani government had given secret permission to the United States to strike at Taliban fighters within their borders. But it was unclear if Obama's position on bin Laden applied only to high-priority targets, or, like Bush's, to any Taliban targets.
Since Obama was inaugurated, we got an answer to the first question when a U.S. airstrike killed 18 people on the Pakistani side of the Afghan border. I emphasize that Obama's position may not be identical to Bush's in terms of what justifies acting within Pakistani territory. But it's clear that bin Laden isn't the threshold.
Last week, we got an answer to the second question when Dianne Feinstein inadvertently let slip that some CIA missile strikes are flown from a Pakistani airbase:
At a hearing, Feinstein expressed surprise over Pakistani opposition to the campaign of Predator-launched CIA missile strikes against Islamic extremist targets along Pakistan's northwestern border.The reason this approach is controversial is that it has a destabilizing effect on Pakistan's government, because Pakistanis naturally don't take too kindly to the idea of a foreign government violating their territorial sovereignty whenever they see fit. The Pakistani government under Asif Ali Zardari is also relatively weak, as evidenced by the deal reached with militants over the Swat region last week. The Obama administration obviously has a pretty perilous tightrope to walk in Afghanistan between striking at militants and keeping Pakistan from destabilizing."As I understand it, these are flown out of a Pakistani base," she said.
-- A. Serwer
