BLUSTER OF BERSERK BARACK NUTTY WAY TO LOSE 2 WARS
August 2, 2007 -- EARLIER in his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Barack Obama just sounded naive. Yesterday, he sounded frightening.
In a speech long on bluster and short on common sense, Obama called, yet again, for withdrawing our troops from Iraq and letting al Qaeda declare victory. But he's not a peacenik: He wants to use those forces to invade Pakistan.
While any sensible American would agree that airstrikes and special-operations raids on al Qaeda and Taliban hideouts in Pakistan make sense, the notion of sending in a massive ground force is madness.
What Obama has in mind would, indeed, make Iraq look like a "cakewalk."
In critiquing the senator's happy-go-lucky belligerency, I have two disadvantages: Unlike Obama, I actually served in the military and, unlike the senator, I've actually been in the stretch of Pakistan he speaks so merrily of invading.
Here's why he's nuts:
* Pakistan is a nuclear power on the brink of internal collapse. Do we really want to drive it over the edge and see loose nukes in the hands of a radicalized military faction - or terrorists?
* The mountain ranges where the terrorists are holed up are vast. The terrain is some of the toughest in the world. An invasion would suck in hundreds of thousands of troops. And a long occupation would be required.
* Even those tribesmen who don't support the Taliban or al Qaeda are proud and xenophobic to extremes - they'd rally against us. And all of the senator's bloggers couldn't stop them.
* The Pakistani military would fight us. Right now, they're cooperating, at least to some degree - but they'd fight any invader.
* President Pervez Musharraf's government would fall - probably overthrown by Islamic nationalists in the military and security services. Welcome to your Islamofascist nuclear power, senator.
* We'd also have to occupy a big corridor through Baluchistan, Pakistan's vast southwest, since we'd lose our current overflight rights and hush-hush transit privileges on the ground.
An army at war needs a lot of fuel, ammunition, food, water, Band-Aids, replacements, etc. (not the sort of things armchair strategists bother about). Afghanistan is landlocked and surrounded by unfriendly states. Pakistan has been helping us keep our troops supplied. And you couldn't sustain Operation Obama by air. The senator hasn't even looked at a map.
* Along with giving away the game in Iraq, an invasion of Pakistan would create a terrorist-recruiting double whammy: The Middle East would mobilize against us - and what could we expect after we invaded a friendly Islamic state?
* Our troops are tired and their gear's worn out. (Obama wouldn't know, and he doesn't care.) They're fighting on in Iraq because they see progress and they have a sense of duty. But does the senator, who clearly doesn't know any soldiers and Marines, expect them to surrender Iraq - then plunge into Pakistan without a collapse in morale?
* Even setting aside the nuke issue, what would President Obama do when Pakistan, an Islamic nation of 170 million, broke into bits? Would we also occupy Karachi, Lahore and other megacities, after they turned into urban jungles where the terrorist became the king of beasts?
Go after al Qaeda? You bet. Anywhere, anytime. But we've got to do it in a way that makes military sense. A general staff recruited from MoveOn.org isn't going to enhance our security.
The only thing Obama accomplished with his wild-eyed pistol-waving yesterday was to make his primary opponent, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, sound like a serious wartime leader.
Ralph Peters' latest book is "Wars of Blood and Faith.
It was the Loving (the name of the couple [whiteman and blackwoman]) vs the Virginia State that was fought right up to the US Supreme Court that abolished, as the BBC programme said, 'the last vestiges of Slavery'.
But really he should keep his snout out of Pakistan affairs..he obviously doesn't understand them 
