*promote

Promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Friday, June 21st, 2013 9:00am PDT - promote requested by enoch.

So, signature strikes are those that identify 'targets' by watching for things like people who leave militant camps with guns to go cross over into Afghanistan and then come back again...

Read up on the situation in Pakistan's tribal regions before setting your position on drone strikes in stone. America is at war with the powers controlling the tribal regions of Pakistan. It's not declaring it a war because that would enrage Pakistan even further, but it is the reality. Pakistan doesn't want to admit that the tribal regions have been essentially seized from them by the Taliban and have been in all but name an independent state that is actively waging war on Pakistan by launching endless attacks on it's civilians.

The deeper truth not spoken about is that the Afghan war was never about Afghanistan, though it was about the 9/11 organizers. After 9/11, America deemed it no longer acceptable for nuclear armed Pakistan to be allied with the groups that just attacked it. The war in Afghanistan was double edged. It gave a launching ground for a land war against Pakistan if needed, and it was a direct warning to Pakistan's leadership that America fully intended to wage war and remove power any government allying itself with the jihadists behind international terrorist attacks. It's just not politically expedient to say that, so president's say more veiled things like: "Your either with us or against us".

Indiscriminate attacks on the civilian population worked wonders when our army was engaging non-military forces on the Balkan back in the days. No better way to create a self-perpetuating low-intensity conflict than killing village elders, with a couple of women and children sprinkled in here and there.

If you treat a population like your enemy, they will become your enemy -- that's the lesson they drew from it. But hey, that was seventy years ago. Nowadays, a decade is more than sufficient to forget any hard-earned lesson.

Drone strikes in northern Pakistan are not indiscriminate. Count how many of the Taliban and Al Qaida's top leadership has been killed off by them. That's some pretty impossibly lucky indiscriminate fire to so frequently end up taking out major jihadist leaders.

Do you have an alternative proposal for dealing with militant jihadists in Pakistan? They are killing civilians, and in particular women, children and students daily. During Pakistan's elections, the Taliban killed multiple candidates, including candidates lobbying extremely hard for an end to drone strikes, an end to military action in the tribal regions, and for talks with the Taliban. Even those candidates were declared enemies by the Taliban for taking part in elections and were killed by them. This isn't about protecting white christians from muslims, it's about jihadists killing off muslims and trying to stop them.

America can't take more precise policed action to arrest or capture militant leaders in Pakistan either. Killing Bin Laden led to even greater outrage than the drone strikes, but boots on the ground are the only method left with less risk of collateral damage. Even if Pakistan's military is finally persuaded to do so instead, it is guaranteed that it will again increase civilian deaths over the short term as any campaign to retake control of the tribal areas is put into action.

It's a mess and simply saying leave them alone is naive and stupid. The Taliban are actively working to topple a nuclear powered state that is particularly vulnerable to them. More over, we are not even sure just how removed from each other key leaders in Pakistan's ISI and military leaders are from jihadist leaders. This instability doesn't play out with a nuke thrown our way in the opening, it comes as jihadists getting enough influence to instigate sending one into India.

If all you pay attention is the idiotically simplistic, war is bad lets not fight pseudo commentators you miss the entire picture.

*news

Adding video to channels (News) - requested by MrFisk.

Moving this video to radx's personal queue. It failed to receive enough votes to get sifted up to the front page within 2 days.

*discard

Discarding this post - discard requested by original submitter radx.

*promote

Promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Friday, June 21st, 2013 9:50am PDT - promote requested by oritteropo.