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It's remarkable, really. On several of the top, most divisive national security issues of the 2008 election... from Iraq to meeting with controversial foreign leaders... and now, to whether to conduct military operations in Pakistan against al Qaeda targets even if Pakistan doesn't allow it... President Bush has moved significantly toward Barack Obama in the last few months.
If this New York Times story is true, Bush has taken up Obama's proposal -- much-mocked by John McCain -- to take action across the Pakistan border without the blessings of that country's leadership. It is the key position in which Obama is more hawkish than McCain. McCain has said he will follow Osama bin Laden to the "gates of hell" as president, but he has drawn the line at crossing the border into Pakistan, reasoning (as many do) that alienating Pakistan with an attack on their soil isn't worth the trouble it would cause. (Interestingly enough, at a hearing I attended the day before the Times story broke, Defense Secretary Robert Gates -- possibly alluding to the divide over this issue on the presidential trail -- made the argument that Pakistan was too important to alienate.)
Indeed, the move has has proven troublesome, based on Pakistan's reaction. But that's not the point. The point is that, once again, Bush has done something that is more like the Democratic presidential candidate than the Republican one. And it hasn't much been noticed yet that in this case -- Reason picked up on it, and MSNBC briefly mentioned it, but I don't see much else on a cursory search, perhaps because it would require reporters to confirm the Times' account of a classified order and they simply haven't done it yet. |
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