Let's Invade, Say ... Pakistan

The fact is, starting with Saudi Arabia and working your way East, you can pretty much make some kind of half-reasonable case for getting warlike on any one of them.

Syria, for instance: Isn't that place kook central? A few cruise missiles into that dictatorship, along with the southern part of Lebanon, and Israel would probably send us flowers. And Iran - forget about it. We've been half-ready to give those conniving mullahs the business since CHiPs was on TV. And how hard could it be? We could probably send Ponch and Jon riding in to hand out designer scarves and soccer tickets and the government would collapse.

At a low level of detail, if you kind of squint at the foreign policy problem, any one of these ideas might sound plausible, if they were uttered over the backyard barbeque after a few Bud Lights.

But in the case of Pakistan, it was picked as a possible target for invasion by Senator Barack Obama, candidate for president.

And you have to credit the guy for trying to sound tough. Perhaps somebody in the backroom noticed we actually live in a dangerous world, and it might be wise to articulate not only those cases when military intervention is a bad idea (we get it, you are against the conflict in Iraq) but also the applicable circumstances when the executive branch should use is powers to make war.

But did he have to pick a country with nukes? That seems like a bad choice. And as much as it flummoxes those who yearn for moral purity, there is a devil-you-know problem with a character like General Perez Musharraf. Sending in the Marines might be the fastest way to guarantee that the Islamic fringe is handed power. It seems to me that the only thing that might make the hunt for Osama Bin Laden any more difficult would be picking our way through the impossibly rough, moon-like outback of Western Pakistan while also fighting a war with whatever group of atomic-powered lunatics managed to overthrow our ostensible ally.

The Hillary people must be very pleased.