PrintFebruary 10, 2010
Obama expanding the war into Pakistan
In February 1969 in response to a new offensive by the North Vietnamese Army, President Richard Nixon ordered the secret bombing of NVA sanctuaries located in Cambodia. The covert extension of the war into a neutral country would cause some of the most intense anti-war demonstrations our nation has ever seen. Eventually Cambodia would be drawn into the war , its government would fall and the Khmer Rouge would launch their reign of terror.
The UK Sunday Times has reported that President Obama has escalated his covert war in Pakistan. U.S. drones are now averaging three air-strikes per week at targets inside Pakistan. The Times also reports.
THE discovery of three American soldiers among the dead in a suicide bombing at the opening of a girls school in the Northwestern Pakistan town of Dir last week reignited the fears of many Pakistanis that Washington was set on invading their country.
The extension of the Afghanistan conflict into neighboring Pakistan more than likely is in retaliation for the murder of seven CIA officers in Afghanistan by a suicide bomber with strong ties to the Pakistani Taliban. Shah Mehmood Qureshi, the Pakistani foreign minister acknowledged the presence of American troops in his country for training purposes. However the according to the Times.
Other sources said there were about 200 US military inside the country.. "I'm not sure you could just call it training" one official said. "They are hardly behind the wire if they are on trips to schools in Dir."
One can only wonder if the main stream media will pick up this story and start asking Mr. Obama some hard questions about this incursion into Pakistan. Will anybody mention the lack of transparency in this operation?
In the aftermath of the bombing of Cambodia and subsequent American military operations the anti-war crowd was particularly aggressive in its burgeoning protests. Among the outraged war protesters were future Obama supporters and confidants Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, future president Bill Clinton and Obama's current Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The War in Afghanistan has often been compared with the War in Vietnam. Can we then compare the military operations in Pakistan to the military incursion in Cambodia?
How is it that Secretary of State Clinton can now support the very sort of secret military operations that she once condemned so profusely? Has she lost her voice? Have her values changed now that she is part of the establishment? Will any member of the main stream media ask Mrs. Clinton for her views on the Pakistan incursion?
Maybe Mr. Obama's Nobel Peace Prize gives him a free pass on this one.
Phil Boehmke / philbepreston@yahoo.com
