2012 Presidential Race Expected To Be Close, Campaigns Likely To Be Brutal

Not hawkish??!

One has to wonder where you actually WERE during the 08 campaign. Like when he proclaimed Afghanista­n 'the good war' and promised to send more troops there, and to expand the war into Pakistan, for example.

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KATIE COURIC: Should the United States respect Pakistani sovereignt­y and not pursue al Qaeda terrorists who maintain bases there, or should we ignore their borders and pursue our enemies, like we did in Cambodia during the Vietnam War?

SEN. OBAMA: Well, Katie, it’s a terrific question.
And we have a difficult situation in Pakistan. I believe that part of the reason we have a difficult situation is because we made a bad judgment going into Iraq in the first place when we hadn’t finished the job of hunting down bin Laden and crushing al Qaeda.

So what happened was we got distracted­, we diverted resources, and ultimately bin Laden escaped, set up base camps in the mountains of Pakistan in the northwest provinces there…
But I do believe that we have to change our policies with Pakistan. We can’t coddle, as we did, a dictator, give him billions of dollars, and then he’s making peace treaties with the Taliban and militants. What I have said is we’re going encourage democracy in Pakistan, expand our non-milita­ry aid to Pakistan so that they have more of a stake in working with us, but insisting that they go after these militants.

And if we have Osama bin Laden in our sights and the Pakistani government is unable or unwilling to take them out, then I think that we have to act, and we will take them out.

We will kill bin Laden. We will crush al Qaeda. That has to be our biggest national security priority.

Bin Laden is dead (or so Obama claims).  Al Qaeda is crushed.  

Don't confuse Al Qaeda with Taliban.  

Yes, Candidate Obama conflated Al Qaeda with the Taliban, too, at times, but was sufficient­ly equivocal, moving back and forth between "depending on conditions at the time (I get into the White House)" and "If I were in office back when 2001 happened", to have voters believing just about any kind of Commander-­in-Chief they wanted out of Obama.  

The mission never was wiping out the Taliban, nor was that what Congress authorized­.  And Mr. "Constitut­ional Scholar/I'­ll-restore­-rule-of-l­aw"-Candid­ate Obama left plenty of wiggle room for voters who wanted to believe he'd be using carrots, not sticks, to secure Americans.  

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