In the debate last night, the "Al Qaeda in Pakistan" issue reared its ugly head again:

Hamm: Should the United States respect Pakistani sovereignty and not pursue al Qaeda terrorists who maintain bases there, or should we ignore their borders and pursue our enemies like we did in Cambodia during the Vietnam War?

Obama:...And if we have Osama bin Laden in our sights and the Pakistani government is unable or unwilling to take them out, then I think that we have to act and we will take them out.

McCain: ...Sen. Obama likes to talk loudly...In fact, he said he wants to announce that he's going to attack Pakistan....I'll get [bin Laden] no matter what and I know how to do it. But I'm not going to telegraph my punches, which is what Sen. Obama did. .

 After all the hot air on this issue, the two candidates are indistinguishable in terms of how they would treat the borders of states that permit terrorists to operate on their territory; the only difference is in how they talk about what they are willing to do. In this case, Obama is too specific, and McCain is too vague...dangerously vague.

 Obama is being too specific because he is being drawn into discussing a particular country, Pakistan. McCain is right in saying that it only aggravates the Pakistanis to discuss things in this manner. I wish that Obama would back up a step and just discuss his general principles for sending military forces into another country uninvited. If he did that, we'd quickly recognize that he isn't saying anything special--his rationale for military action in Pakistan is no different than our rationale for intervention in Afghanistan: our enemies were operating freely in that territory. Furthermore, we already have made incursions into Pakistan, so there is really no dodging of the question about whether those incursions were justified.

McCain on the other hand, wants to completely avoid talking about this issue. He says he wants to "talk softly, but carry a big stick", which apparently means that he doesn't want to lay out his principles for when military action is acceptable; instead, he just wants us to trust him to take care of things. This is problematic on two fronts: first, in foreign affairs it is the attitude of an imperialist; in domestic affairs it is the attitude of a dictator.

By refusing to specify the conditions under which we will intervene, McCain leaves the impression that military intervention will occur solely at the whims of the US President, whenever he considers it "in the national interest". On top of McCain's professed admiration for Teddy Roosevelt (and apparently, his imperialist foreign policy), this refusal to specify the criteria for intervention will lead to the international perception that the USA is a dangerous and unpredictable superpower.

Domestically, McCain's refusal to specify the conditions for intervention asks us to just "trust him". He considers these issues to be too sensitive for public discussion; consequently, they are issues beyond democratic review.