Video: In Role Reversal, McCain Critical of Obama’s ‘in Your Face’ on Pakistan
Latest update: December 12th, 2012
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McCain on PBS NewsHour Thursday
What’s wrong with this picture? Why didn’t anybody tell me Sen. John McCain has joined the left wing of the Democratic party?
It looks like McCain is going all cautious on the Administration, accusing Obama of “antagonizing the Pakistanis” with his “in your face attitude.” I thought that’s what Republicans believe presidents should do.
Is McCain scared of something we don’t know?
In an interview Thursday with PBS NewsHour’s Judy Woodruff (see clip below), McCain said that the administration’s encouragement of India taking a more active role in Afghanistan while simultaneously criticizing Pakistan could be a recipe for disaster.
“To further antagonize Pakistan unnecessarily is not something I would particularly think is appropriate,” said the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee. “It’s a very delicate situation, one in which I would be very careful what we say publicly,” especially because the Pakistanis “are supporting organizations that are killing Americans.”
“I would have nurtured this relationship with India sort of the way we have been for years, rather than sort of antagonizing the Pakistanis even more with this kind of in your face attitude,” he said.
PBS quoted Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta saying to reporters in Afghanistan last week that the United States was “reaching the limits of our patience” with Pakistan, for offering a “safe haven” for the Haqqani network, from which they attack U.S. forces.
Panetta visited New Delhi, to encourage the Indians to take a “more active role” in Afghanistan.
McCain said that he would “do it more quietly” on India.
McCain told Woodruff that Pakistan’s duplicitous behavior “doesn’t mean that we also cut off all relations with Pakistan because then it could become even more unstable and we could have even greater challenges since they have a nuclear inventory, among other things.”
tell a friendAbout the Author: JewishPress.com Senior Internet Editor Yori Yanover has been a working journalist since age 17, before he enlisted and worked for Ba'Machane Nachal. Since then he has worked for Israel Shelanu, the US supplement of Yedioth, JCN18.com, USAJewish.com, Lubavitch News Service, Arutz 7 (as DJ on the high seas), and the Grand Street News. He has published two fun books: The Cabalist's Daughter: A Novel of Practical Messianic Redemption, and How Would God REALLY Vote.
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During the 2008 Presidential debates, Obama said that he would institute a campaign of drone strikes against terrorists in Pakistan. McCain's response was that what he had learned through his armed service was that one does not telegraph one's strikes. In this situation, McCain similarly objects not to what Obama is doing by courting India's involvement in the GWOT, but the way in which he is doing it. It is almost as if Obama is _trying_ to provoke the hostility of a nuclear-armed Muslim state.