McCain's Faulty Reasoning on Pakistan

One of Senator McCain's primary goals during the first debate was to make Senator Obama look dangerously unqualified to lead the nation in foreign affairs. He made a number of aggressive and often snide remarks to that effect, and generally came off looking extremely confident in his knowledge and experience. The question is, how justified is that confidence?

I won't try to go through all the details here. I want to focus on one point only, and it has to do with Pakistan. McCain criticized Obama heavily for speaking his mind, for saying out loud that he might, under certain conditions, launch military strikes into Pakistan. It was not a direct threat to Pakistan, but it did make it clear that Obama is not willing to unconditionally trust the Pakistani government at all times and on all issues.

I happen to think Obama's point about Pakistan is valid, and McCain would seem to agree. After all, McCain has not criticized Obama's reasoning. He has only criticized the fact that Obama said it out loud. He said, "You don't say that out loud. If you have to do things, you have to do things."

The problem is, McCain spoke this criticism out loud, thus making it clear to Pakistan that he doesn't trust them any more than Obama does.

If McCain thinks what Obama said shouldn't have been spoken out loud, then he should have distanced himself from Obama's thinking. Instead of doing that, he made it clear that Obama hasn't said anything that McCain isn't also willing to say.

Unfortunately, I don't think Obama did a very good job of responding to McCain's faulty reasoning. He let McCain look stronger than he really is. Maybe he'll do better next time.