By Brendan McLaughlin

Barack Obama’s statement on Pakistan Wednesday was so obvious, so common sense and so long overdue, every other presidential candidate, democrat or republican should be gnashing their teeth for not saying it first.  Here’s what he said as part of an address on the global war on terror. 

 "There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharaf will not act, we will."

John Kerry and countless other democrats have hammered away at the failure to capture Osama Bin Laden at Tora Bora, - a strategic blunder that, barring the invention of a time machine, cannot be un-done.  The more provocative, yet productive question to ask is, why don’t we go get him tomorrow morning?  There's strong evidence that Bin Laden and his protectors are setting up training camps in the badlands of Pakistan along the Afghanistan border and waging attacks our forces in Afghanistan. Waziristan is rugged country, but it’s not the moon.

The standard excuses for allowing Al Qaeda to strengthen and plan further attacks on America are based on assumptions by the same people who brought us the Iraq War. They go something like this:  Pakistan’s leader, General Pervez Musharaf is a cherished ally in the war on terror and is vigorously hunting down Al Qaeda within his borders. President Bush can’t send the Marines into Pakistan, because it would inflame the population and threaten Musharaf’s tenuous grip on power. If Musharaf falls, then the only Muslim nation with nukes could fall into the hands of Islamic radicals possibly Al Qaeda itself.  George Bush and *** Cheney believe their buddy Pervez is doing a heck of a job. Maybe that’s why we send him millions in cash and hi-tech weaponry.

We’re told  that Iraq is central to the war on terror because we’re capturing and killing Al Qaeda there every day.  But Al Qaeda in Iraq is loose collection of opportunists who have  pledged allegiance to Bin Laden. The truth is, the President is outsourcing the hunt for our real enemies to a quasi-dictator in Khaki.

 Barack Obama isn't the first candidate promising to aggressively hunt down Al Qaeda.  But he is the first to promise to do it whether Pervez Musharaf likes it or not.   That’s not naïve. It’s the right thing to do.