Obama on Pakistan: We Need More Than the ‘Occasional Shot Fired’

Barack Obama, talking tough about al Qaeda, said that Pakistan needs to do more than fire the “occasional shot” to contain the terrorist threat near its border.

Obama, in an interview with CBS News that aired Sunday, said he hopes that the United States doesn’t have to take unilateral military action against al Qaeda in Pakistan, something he suggested he was willing to do last year.

But he said that he, as president, would send a “clear message” to Pakistan that it needed to act against the al Qaeda threat.

“Well, you know, I think that the U.S. government provides an awful lot of aid to Pakistan, provides a lot of military support to Pakistan,” Obama said. “And to send a clear message to Pakistan that this is important to them as well as to us, that I think — that message has not been sent.”Obama said that the United States should take unilateral action if “we had actual intelligence against high-value al Qaeda targets and the Pakistani government was unwilling to go after those targets.”

Obama added that his willingness to conduct a unilateral strike, which he first voiced last August, wasn’t a shift from the current doctrine under President Bush.
“Both the administration and some of my opponents suggested, you know, ‘You shouldn’t go around saying that,'” Obama said. “But I don’t think there’s any doubt that that should be our policy and will continue to be our policy.”

He later added: “I don’t think there’s going to be a change there. I think that in order for us to be successful it’s not going to be enough just to engage in the occasional shot fired. We’ve got training camps that are growing and multiplying.”