It’s a little hard to keep your eye on the ball of U.S. foreign policy when it appears to be playing out at so many different places on the earth. Just this week we have had two “summits” of sorts, as Barack Obama has visited Canada and Hillary Clinton has warmed up her Secretary of State world-traveling by a trip to meet with Chinese leaders. These two summits were singularly non-productive in terms of U.S. leaders resolving any outstanding differences with these countries. Some people had “expected” (hoped) that Obama would confront Canada about its tar sand oil production and distribution and/or Obama’s campaign promises to “reform” NAFTA in ways that would be inimical to Canadian interests. Certainly Tibetan civil rights activists had “expected” that Clinton would confront China about its brutal suppression of dissent, especially in the case of those demanding liberation of China’s Tibetan minority. The things hoped for were a far cry from what was achieved in both cases. These summits, as summits usually are, were essentially photo-ops for leaders of the U.S. and these countries to appear together in flag-draped joint appearances for them to “affirm” the policies of these countries as those of unflinching cooperation and undying love and admiration for one another. If you are a “fan” of summits (that is to say, if you’re a masochist) you’ve seen all this before.
What is really more interesting—and indeed more alarming—-is what might have taken place almost completely under the radar of media attention, as broadcasters were obsessed once again with “covering” this vacuous summit pageantry, while real changes—changes we can believe in whether we like them or not—occurred under much more clandestine circumstances. There was a sea change in U.S. policy in its military operations in Pakistan, as the New York Times reported the “broadening” of those operations in fresh attacks of U.S. drones in the country; and the news of this was not that of another attack of the same kind, but of a very different target. The attacks on Pakistan across the Afghan border that made “Obama’s war” of the action in Pakistan on the very day of his inauguration were justified as efforts to hit the Pakistani hideouts of the al Qaeda and/or Taliban forces that were smuggling arms and fighters into Afghanistan to help the insurgency that the U.S. and NATO were fighting there. While Pakistan protested these raids, others suggested tacit Pakistani approval of them, one version of their cooperation even suggesting the offending drones were based in Pakistan itself. This interpretation of Pakistani collusion takes on new credibility with the Times report on the target of the latest attack: a base of Baitullah Mehsud, alleged assassin of Benadir Bhutto and certainly the implacable enemy of the government now headed by Bhutto’s widower.
So now we find a rather startling instance of “mission creep”: the tendency of a military operation to take on other dimensions than the limited ones under which the operation was begun. The war on Pakistan is no longer an extension of the war on Afghanistan, but is the U.S. government’s enlistment in the Pakistani government’s effort to protect itself from the “regime change” intentions of its internal enemies…quite a different kind of “war.” And how did this “mission creep” come to be? May I suggest a scenario in which President Obama’s Special Envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, was the creepy missionary who conveyed to American drone commanders an urgent request from the Pakistani government that they undertake this mission? Did Obama approve this fundamental change in our military operations, as he would be required as Commander in Chief to do? Perhaps, but it is also a real if chilling alternative to suggest that Holbrooke is the instrument (one of the instruments?) of a cabal of the generals which is becoming the de facto determiner of U.S. war policy, in profound violation of the old saw that “war is too important to be left to the generals.”
Whether this mission creep occurred with or without the approval or even the knowledge of the President, it may be a revealing “coincidence” that it occurred at the same time that most media and public attention was focussed on those “summit” extravaganzas in Beijing and Ottawa, after the stimulus bill had been signed and the bank of flags had temporarily gone from public view, to appear again with the showy press conferences in these foreign capitals. Perhaps the creeps who read the evening news will eventually be reading about how the U.S. overnight became the ally of Pakistan in the suppression of opposition in that country, but so far they’ve barely recovered from the jet lag of exhaustive trips to Canada and China to “cover” those meaningless summits.
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Jerry D. Rose – Editor, The Sun State Activist
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