Per Ambinder, Hillary Clinton says “If we had actionable intelligence that Osama bin Laden or other high-value targets were in Pakistan I would ensure that they were targeted and killed or captured” while Edwards says “My belief is that we have a responsibility to find bin Laden and al Qaeda wherever they operate. I think we need to maximize pressure on Musharraf and the Pakistani government. If they can’t do the job, then we have to do it.”

I hope this’ll be the last we hear of this issue, though fear that it may somehow become a staple of ever-more-fine-grained questions. The more you think about it, though, the more this just seems like a totally pointless hypothetical. If you had a situation where you had firm intelligence that a key al-Qaeda target could be taken out with a discrete special forces mission or a well-placed missile, the Pakistani government would no doubt give the okay. Conversely, posturing aside, nobody’s going to send a giant invasion force into the Pakistani mountains contrary to the will of the government. Bringing this scenario up in the first place was a pretty silly gambit on Obama’s part (what if Osama was on the Moon? in New Brunswick?), though it arguably worked. Anyways, for The Guardian what I found more important about Obama’s speech.

It’s well known that NBA stars don’t like to take on political topics lest it hurt them with their sponsors. The really clever ones, though, like Gilbert Arenas just slip their commentary under the radar screen through the use of analogy and metaphor. Here, for example, are Agent Zero’s thoughts on Iran:

There are these things called shark attacks, but there is no such thing as a shark attack. I have never seen a real shark attack.

I know you€™re making a weird face as you€™re reading this. OK people, a shark attack is not what we see on TV and what people portray it as.

We€™re humans. We live on land.

Sharks live in water.

So if you€™re swimming in the water and a shark bites you, that€™s called trespassing. That is called trespassing. That is not a shark attack.

A shark attack is if you€™re chilling at home, sitting on your couch, and a shark comes in and bites you; now that€™s a shark attack. Now, if you€™re chilling in the water, that is called invasion of space. So I have never heard of a shark attack.

Sharks, sure. He’s just talking about sharks.

Politico‘s Ben Smith with a key observation on Barack Obama’s terrorism speech:

Also absent from the speech is any reference to “Islamic terrorism,” “Islamism,” or “Islamofacism” — the buzzwords of those who see a global conflict between the West and a specifically Muslim insurgency.

Right. Smith also notes (as does an aggrevied Katherine Jean-Lopez) that Obama didn’t use the phrase “war on terror.” Obviously, on this score it’s John Edwards who got the ball rolling and deserve credit for breaking the taboo, but it’s good to see further forward progress on this front, especially since Obama gave a speech that could hardly be accused of ignoring the reality of terrorism, as opposed to the right’s conceptual terrorism-related mirages.

And here’s what you need to know about the surge. The point of the surge was to create conditions on the ground that might help boost political reconciliation. Instead, Iraqis are less reconciled than ever. But don’t call it a failure of the surge, it’s not that a better surge would have worked. The issue is that it was the whole wrong diagnosis. Political problems were — and are — driving military problems and not the other way ’round.

Mark Kleiman, meanwhile, has a good suggestion based on Ambassador Ryan Crocker’s view that “We are buying time at a cost of the lives of our soldiers.” Just ask how many soldiers Bush really wants to see die in order to buy more time for Iraqi politicians.

Unfortunately, HASC doesn’t seem to have a transcript of yesterday’s hearing ready, but Avi Zenilman’s Politico article captures the key element of O’Hanlon’s weird flip-flop:

“We have seized the initiative,” Keane said. “Michael O’Hanlon’s article lays that out.”

“I agree with General Keane that trendlines are improving on the military, tactical level” O’Hanlon told the subcommittee. But of the surge strategy, he said: “I’m dubious, despite my generally inspiring visit last week.”

In other words, while Jon Chait may feel that the argument of the O’Hanlon/Pollack essay “has some weight,” it seems that O’Hanlon himself doesn’t put that much weight on it.

Read it here. It seemed pretty good to me, although nothing extraordinary. On the business of the “tough” and “provocative” bits about Pakistan, I think the devil is obviously in the details. One could imagine a situation in which a special forces raid against a terrorist base inside Pakistan would be a good idea even if the Pakistani government didn’t approve, but one could also imagine a situation in which it would be a terrible idea. This is basically the sort of question that I think looks a lot simpler from outside the White House than from inside the Oval Office.

I liked that Obama put his critique of starting the Iraq War and his argument in favor of ending the Iraq War firmly inside his argument about terrorism.

Back in February of 2004, Frank Foer did a great piece for TNR looking at the few members of the foreign policy establishment who had the temerity to work with Howard Dean and then the wave of retribution launched against them when he lost:

By the time Dean began assembling his national security team, though, most of the Democratic foreign policy establishment–which is now heavily clustered at the Brookings Institution–was already quietly committed to the Kerry, Wesley Clark, and John Edwards campaigns (in the case of some wonks, all three at once). Without the party’s A-list names, the Dean campaign began searching for advisers in less glamorous quarters. For their foreign policy rollout, they signed up former Secretary of State Warren Christopher and former national security adviser Tony Lake–veterans of Clinton’s first term. But, in Democratic circles, Clinton’s first term is widely considered a low point in the party’s foreign policy, and, in any case, Christopher and Lake weren’t substantive advisers. So, last fall, Dean recruited two mid-level Clintonites from Brookings for his day-to-day needs, former Director of European Affairs at the National Security Council Ivo Daalder and former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Susan Rice.

For many in the Democratic foreign policy establishment, Dean was seen as dangerous. They worried that his strident opposition to the Iraq war would revive old clichés about the party’s pacifism and that his claim that Saddam Hussein’s capture did nothing to enhance U.S. security would prove fodder for countless GOP ads. No one was more concerned on this score than Daalder’s Brookings colleague and occasional co-author, Michael O’Hanlon, who penned scathing op-eds in The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Times attacking Dean. O’Hanlon, who advises several of the candidates–including Kerry–told me, “More Democrats should have recognized [Dean's] danger and spoken out against him.” Within Brookings, O’Hanlon’s pieces were seen as a direct assault on Daalder and Rice and a break with the institution’s genteel mores. One Brookings fellow describes them as “just bizarre. Forgive me, but that was personal, not professional.” Others at the think tank reported witnessing loud, uncomfortable hallway arguments between Daalder and O’Hanlon over Dean.

At the time, Dean was still riding high, and–O’Hanlon’s attacks notwithstanding–so were Daalder and Rice. But now that Dean is done, Rice and especially Daalder may find their career prospects also dimmed. When I spoke with the foreign policy gurus who would likely stock a Democratic administration, they seemed to regard the Dean campaign as a debilitating black mark on one’s resumé. It doesn’t help Daalder that he took an aggressive posture during Dean’s glory days. Instead of privately conceding his candidate’s foreign policy shortcomings, Daalder defended him to the hilt. “After Dean delivered the line about Saddam’s capture, Ivo was quite animated in defending that sentence,” says one Brookings fellow. And, as a former Clinton administration official told me, “If you’re a policy adviser, you exist to stop lines like that from being delivered. And, if it gets delivered over your objections, you have an obligation to fall on your sword. This whole campaign causes me to question [Daalder's and Rice's] judgment.”

That’s something people who realize that Dean was right about the war and right about Saddam’s capture might want to keep in mind. This year, clearly, you don’t have distinctions that are as clear cut as the ones prompted by the 2004 primary but you still do have echoes of this same clash inside the establishment.