Rivals split on U.S. power, but ideas defy labels

When to intervene
While Mr. McCain reminds audiences that he vowed to do whatever it took to win in Iraq, he has been extraordinarily reluctant when it comes to the war in Afghanistan to advocate cross-border attacks into Pakistan, even though top military commanders have publicly said that is a prerequisite to victory. Mr. McCain has dismissed Mr. Obama’s advocacy of military action inside Pakistan as unwise, saying his rival does not appreciate how Pakistanis would react to an incursion by an ally, even into ungovernable territory Pakistan itself has never really controlled.

That was Mr. Bush’s view as well until July, when he issued secret orders allowing American Special Operations forces to conduct ground incursions into Pakistan, to keep insurgents from forming a safe haven. Mr. McCain has not condemned Mr. Bush’s action, but he has suggested that such operations should never be discussed in public and that Mr. Obama had made a rookie’s mistake by raising the possibility.

“The last thing we should be doing is telegraphing to Pakistan that we are going to violate their sovereignty,” Mr. Scheunemann said last week, when asked if Mr. McCain was opposed to military action over the border, or just opposed to talking about it. “Senator Obama’s stubborn insistence on publicly threatening to attack targets in Pakistan and limit military assistance is swagger, not statesmanship.”

Mr. Obama has frequently said he would send American personnel over the border to kill leaders of Al Qaeda. In his speech at the Democratic convention, Mr. Obama accused Mr. McCain of focusing on the wrong war — Iraq — and he vowed to hunt down Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants.

But American policy since the attacks of Sept. 11 has backed hunting down Qaeda members anywhere, including inside Pakistan. A harder question is whether to go into Pakistan to hunt down Taliban or other militant groups using the sanctuary to mount attacks against Americans in Afghanistan or to strike the Pakistani government. On that question, Mr. Obama has been ambiguous, and his campaign has declined to clarify his statements.

Humanitarian aid
When it comes to sending troops to protect the oppressed, it is Mr. Obama who has sounded a lot more like an interventionist than Mr. McCain.

Mr. McCain has long been a skeptic of sending American troops on humanitarian quests — whether for peacekeeping, peacemaking or missions that morphed from one to the other. He has reminded voters that he opposed military interventions in Lebanon in the early 1980s, and in Somalia, Haiti and Bosnia in the 1990s. He has often asked what good American troops can do in a single year when the conflict they are parachuting into has roiled for centuries, and he has often demanded to see an exit strategy before troops were committed.

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