Ok, I have to say something.
Fact of the matter is that no one here really wants to see innocent people die. Everyone's heart aches for the poor people of Swat and other surrounding areas that have been taken by the Taliban.
But Pakistanis have to recognize one thing. The Taliban are not their friends. To flush them out of their society, is the only solution now to this problem. Why is this such a hard process, and why are the American drones being used, and why are innocent people dying, and strategically do the deaths of innocent people in these villages contribute to growing terror? And most importantly, something that is being asked by almost everyone, but no one can give concrete answers - who are these Taliban, really?
All valid questions, that need answers as innocent life is being lost.
Primarily, this is a problem that needs to be solved by the Pakistani government. The only reason why you are seeing American drones in the picture now, is because the Pakistani government doesn't have the willpower and/or resources to abolish the Taliban. The Taliban have been mounting forces since 2001 when the US went into Afghanistan - the first thing these idiots did was run into Pakistan. Do you think NO ONE knew they were slowly infiltrating Pakistani society? Do you also think that the presence of Taliban and associated terror rings were not already in hiding within Pakistani cities? It was all there to begin with. Now I'm hearing of news that there were tunnels being built by the Taliban and Al Qaeda along the border with Afghanistan, to funnel supplies to the insurgents in Afghanistan.
Mind you - all at the cost of the safety of a separate sovereign people i.e. Pakistanis. All at the cost of these kids you're seeing now dying left and right.
Who stopped them? Musharraf should have been way more harsh - but I don't know to what extent he knew of the problem and to what extent their information was correct vs. bull, and to what extent he had power over stopping them. I do know that Americans were very aware of this problem and had been harping on and on about it for some years with Musharraf in power, and Musharraf's government was denying it was happening. Why would he have done such a thing, I do not understand - either he was misinformed or he knew, and he just wasn't taking the action to stop their movements on the border.
Needless to say, war doesn't shrink, it spreads. It spills over. And the greed and lust to kill is pretty infectious - although it seems counterintuitive, history has shown enough of what men are capable of when they get indoctrinated into a cult of hate and bloodshed. It becomes fun to spill blood. So a lot of what we're seeing is very cult-like behavior, and cults can get very difficult to contain.
Its clear the Pakistani government and army are not wanting to fight this battle entirely on their own - too much risk of losing Pakistani soldiers when we've already lost so many to defending the Afghani border. The loss of so much life in the army has demoralized the army, and lost support of the Pakistani people - no one wants to send their kids to get army training anymore. Its just not a prestigious job. The army is stretched thin.
Zardari's government is too irresponsible. They can't even admit that Swat is no longer under their political and military control. No one is willing to say the facts anymore.
Swat is no longer Pakistani.
So, its easy to give the job to the American drones. Americans don't really care - with remote controlled drones, we Americans are not losing any American life to the problems in NWFP. Just send in a drone and drop a bomb. For us Americans, its more worth taking out 5 militants, and risking the lives of 2 kids, because then those 5 militants are not going to go on now and have the opportunity to take out 50 Pakistani lives by beheading them and displaying them in Khuni chowk, are not going to blow up another 10 schools, are not going to blow up another hotel in Pakistan, are not going to block the supply route to supplies going to Afghanistan, thereby saving a couple of hundreds of Afghani and American lives, will not get a chance to help mastermind another 911, that would take out another couple of hundreds of American lives, and destroy more financial infrastructure that would cause the loss of even more jobs and result in growing American poverty.
So those 5 militants are vital to take out. And if we've lost 2 or 3 little munchkins that were completely innnocent and had nothing to do with anything, then that's a tough choice to make, but America is left with very little other choice. As of yet, I haven't heard the Paksitani people come up with a valid alternative solution. So for the time being, the drone attacks will continue.
And for those who want to criticize Obama for continuing this policy, just keep in mind how many troops he's pulling out of Iraq and how many innocent Iraqi lives will be saved by, hopefully, the toning down of violence in Iraq.
My only criticism is that the Pakistani government, if it will support these drone attacks, needs to do everything in its power to evacuate women and children from these areas, and relocate them not to tents in the north where they can freeze to death, but to proper homes and housing developments in urban areas, and try to integrate the kids and continue their education in the cities.
This leads to another question - why aren't the people of Pakistan opening up their arms to the internally displaced pakistanis? (IDP's)
