Susie's sent a wicked brilliant piece over the transom to Joe Trippi [link], and something that I've been mulling over in the few idle moments Jonah and the gang and work leave me with ... what if we advised the Edwards campaign? I mean, threw stuff at them, because, they need to pull a rabbit out of a hole in a hat.
When Susie read us the script and got to the Chris Mathews moment I _knew_ the next line would be "Senator Edwards, how much did you pay for your haircut?"
So, Pakistan. Bhutto, Nukes, Baluchistan and Iran, and the Tribal Autonomous Areas.
Senator Clinton opined that there should be a independent, international investigation into Benazir Bhutto's assassination, suggesting that Pakistani security forces or military might have been involved.
She's spot-on that in the history of political successions in Pakistan, the military and the intelligence service have acted with lethal agency, but dreaming that the UNSC (China in particular) would vote to compel a Hariri-like investigation, and further dreaming that the military and the intelligence service could be compelled, in a state under their control, to cooperate and assume culpability for even negligence, or worse. Day dreaming.
Senator Clinton also opined that she would try to get Musharraf to share the security responsibility of the nuclear weapons with a delegation from the United States and perhaps Great Britain so that there is some failsafe.
To quote Jeff Lewis, who has a day job as an academic arms control policy wonk:
First, there is simply no way Pakistan would ever agree to it.
Second, it would complicate both U.S.-Indian relations and deterrence on the subcontinent. My eyes cross when I begin to think about the implications of an American/British failsafe in the context of a Pakistani-Indian nuclear standoff.
Third, it would violate the NPT. Article I of the NPT requires nuclear-weapon States like America to not in any way to assist, encourage, or induce any non-nuclear weapon State to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons. Under the NPT, Pakistan is a non-nuclear weapon State.
My eyes cross also, but not because of the hypothetical Pakistani-Indian nuclear standoff, but because of the certainty of a Senator and Presidential candidate with so proximal a personal experience to nuclear non-proliferation responsibility as the spouse of a former President, who does not know the first rule of non-proliferation: no nukes. Not fissiles, not launch codes, not command and control. Nada.
Next there is Baluchistan and Iran, for which Senator Clinton is not particularly on record. But we are and so John Edwards could be, cause we're way ahead of the curve. We don't really want to frustrate China's attempt to get a straw into the Sui gas field and Gulf oil, because we're not sipping Dick Cheney's mint koolips, and we don't think the whole damn world revolves around nuclear end games for peak oil. That said, we don't give a damn if Baluchistan rejoins Oman or stays in Pakistan, but if it stays in Pakistan, the Punjabi state needs to figure out what "federalism" means, and how they can broker sales of Baluchi natural gas to India. The other side of the Baluchi-Punjabi relationship is the Iranian frontier, and there are US troops there, wicked far away from OBL in or north of, the Autonomous Tribal Areas, doing nothing useful. But doing it far too close to Iran's defense perimeter. They need a movement order, to Diego Garcia or Kuwait or Europe or back home.
Finally there is the Tribal Autonomous Areas. The OBL problem. The worst proposal to come from a Democratic candidate came from Wes Clark in the last cycle -- turn it over to the Saudis and let them ... do it. The value in this is its wrongness. The Pakistani state has never controlled the Tribal Autonomous Areas, it is why they are called the Tribal Autonomous Areas. Whatever our interests are in the area, we are less likely to achieve those interests if we ignore the autonomous and tribal nature of those areas. We have a relationship with the Punjabi state. We need a relationship with the Pashtuns as well, and a constructive one, not just a sequence of special ops. We need to build schools for girls, it is the better choice and it is our enemies weakest spot.
There, less than 2 minutes to make four points in a debate, points that are really about what we'll be doing in 2012, dancing around the same campfire, graced with another many-k of US and Iraqi skulls and crossbones, or out, and comforting the afflicted, creating less long-term risk to ourselves in passing.