Obama is a dilettante

Can't say I agree with Hillary Clinton too often, but I can see her reasons when she calls Obama's foreign policy ideas "naive".

Take Obama's recent statements regarding Pakistan:

Mr Obama will warn the Pakistani president, Pervez Musharraf, that he must do more to shut down terrorist operations in his country and evict foreign fighters. He will say failure to do so could mean a US troop invasion and the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in US military aid under an Obama presidency.

Sure, you can discount this simply as bullshit pre-election posturing, but even the posturing reflects a way of thinking.

Now, it's obvious that the terrorists are if fact hiding the mountains of Pakistan, and that Pakistani military has issues controlling those areas. But is that enough of a reason to weaken one of the few remaining allies we have?

Pervez Musharraf is an ideal ally, given the part of the world we're talking about. He's an army officer, he's not a religious nut, he manages to stay in power without too much blood, he helps us despite all the fanatics inside and outside his country, and oh yeah - he has a nuclear-tipped army backing him up.

Everyone's fretting about Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, yet I-hope-to-never-be President Obama is ok with destabilizing nuclear Pakistan which also happens to provide at least some assistance to us when it comes to intelligence in the area.

Bush was wrong on Iraq - he destabilized a country held together by ruthless, tyrannical but secular Saddam Hussein. No matter how Iraq ends, the will not be a secular ruler there (much less chance of that if the country is broken up).

The consequences of ascension of a non-secular ruler or, worse still, an "Islamic Revolution" in a nuclear-armed Pakistan could not be graver.

If Obama wasn't such a dilettante, he'd know that.