As KV noted in two previous posts, Senator Kerry and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held hearings both in June and July of this year, sending an alert on the urgent need to attend to the situation in Pakistan.

The Senator has repeatedly issued warnings of the powderkeg in Pakistan. He spoke of Pakistan in 2004, and has urged attention to the region time and again since. Yet all of this has fallen on the deaf ears of the Bush administration, and now we are looking at a country in crisis. One with nuclear capabilities.

In Sen. Kerry's opening statement in the July hearing (prepared remarks), he noted:

Clearly, the most pressing and direct national security concern we face in Pakistan is the resurgence of Al Qaeda in the tribal regions bordering Afghanistan. We were all deeply troubled by the recent National Intelligence Estimate entitled “The Terrorist Threat to the U.S. Homeland” which made clear that while we have been distracted and bogged down in Iraq, Al Qaeda has grown stronger than at any time since 9/11. The NIE brought home in the starkest possible terms that Al Qaeda has “regenerated key elements of its homeland attack capability, including: a safe haven in the Pakistan Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), operational lieutenants, and its top leadership.” Osama Bin Laden and top Al Qaeda leaders are likely still hiding out somewhere in the region, and none of us here need to be reminded of the nightmare scenario of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal falling into the wrong hands.

We also know that the Taliban is using the tribal areas as a base for launching attacks against coalition forces in Afghanistan, and our generals tell us that Taliban leaders have maintained a headquarters in Quetta. It is clear that we cannot succeed in the vital mission of stabilizing Afghanistan if the enemies of the coalition and the Karzai government enjoy a safe haven right across the border.

General Eikenberry, the former commanding general in Afghanistan, summed it up simply: “Al Qaeda and Taliban leadership presence inside Pakistan…must be satisfactorily addressed if we are to prevail in Afghanistan and if we are to defeat the global threat posed by international terrorism.” In other words, the central front in the fight against terrorism is right where it has always been: along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. We simply cannot allow history to repeat itself, and many of us are concerned that we do not have an effective strategy to counter this threat.

Is there any doubt now that Pakistan is the timebomb Sen. Kerry has been warning of for years? Is there even a question as to who has presented us with a sound, rational and even prescient approach to foreign policy?

Not to me.

As a matter of fact, it's so obvious, even Bush and Rice may be able to see it. But here's a tip for both of them, just in case:

This Thursday, Senator Kerry is holding a hearing on Syria. There are problems in Syria. Big ones. There's the thing with Lebanon, another one of those 'powderkegs'. There are also 1.5 million Iraqi refugees in Syria because of the war in Iraq (the one you started).

SFRC Near East and South and Central Asian Affairs Subcommittee

Syria: Options and Implications for Lebanon and the Region

Hearing: Thursday, November 8, 2007 at 2:30 p.m.
Place: 419 The Dirksen Senate Office Building
Presiding: Senator Kerry

I would advise you both to pay attention. Because what you're doing, Madame Secretary, is not diplomacy.