Morning Update: Feisty Debate on Trade, Pakistan
Labor was the main subject of last night’s Democratic Debate in Chicago, hosted by the AFL-CIO. Still, the candidates discussed Iraq and China, as well as NAFTA, the WTO, and international labor standards, among other foreign policy topics.
Barack Obama has had to defend his statement on Pakistan constantly for the past week (Pakistani-Americans protested his visit to Chicago earlier in the day), and the debate last night was no exception. Chris Dodd criticized Obama’s attack on Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, saying, “While General Musharraf is no Thomas Jefferson, he may the only thing that stands between having an Islamic fundamentalist state in that country” and called Obama’s statement “highly irresponsible.”
Obama responded that it was “amusing that those who helped to authorize and engineer the biggest foreign policy disaster in our generation are criticizing me for making sure we are on the right battle field.”
Joe Biden weighed in, pointing out that it is already U.S. policy to go into Pakistan if Musharraf does not cooperate with the fight against Al Qaeda. The crowd of union workers and activists booed that statement, however, apparently because it was not a response to the question that was asked regarding mine safety.
Later, Dodd told CFR.org, “I am very worried that we have done [Musharraf] great damage. If that’s the case, what you’re going to have in Pakistan is going be a mirror image, I think, of what happened in Afghanistan, the difference being they have nuclear weapons.”
During the debate, Dennis Kucinich said he would withdraw from NAFTA and the WTO immediately after taking office. Obama and John Edwards said they would meet with the Canadian and Mexican heads of state to try to amend NAFTA.
Dodd also said funding should be removed from some of the defense systems, including Star Wars and the missile defense system, in order to support infrastructure reinforcement across the country.
