With his first entry in an otherwise blank foreign policy ledger, Barack Obama sabotaged America’s operational relationship with Pakistan. On August 1, 2007, during a speech at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, Senator Obama said of Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan:
There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again . . . If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will.
The statement was swiftly criticized by prominent Republicans and Democrats as inept and harmful to American interests. (It was actually Senator Joe Biden who leveled the most insightful charge at Obama, saying, “The last thing you want to do is telegraph to the folks in Pakistan plans that threaten their sovereignty.”)
Yet that is precisely what Senator Obama managed to do.
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