I figured that the surge of strikes starting in the summer and going through the end of last year was to keep the enemy off balance during the presidential transition. If true, the rate would slow down after the transition. I expected this would be so since I wasn't sure if the gain of killing jihadis would outweigh the problem of angering Pakistanis. That is, are the Predator strikes an example of ineffective military force that is enough to inspire enemies but not enough to actually defeat them.
This is the dilemma:
Pakistani leaders told visiting American envoy Richard Holbrooke earlier this week that the missile strikes kill too many civilians and undermine the government's own counterinsurgency strategy.
Still, many analysts suspect that Pakistan has tacitly consented to the attacks in order not to endanger billions of dollars in American and Western support for its powerful military and its ailing economy.
Pakistan's pro-Western government, led by Bhutto widower Asif Ali Zardari, has signed peace deals with tribal leaders in the northwest while launching a series of military operations of its own against hard-liners.
However, government forces are bogged down in several regions and Taliban militants have sustained a campaign that has included a string of kidnappings and other attacks on foreigners.
It is outrageous that the relatively few innocents we kill accidentally appear to outweigh the many innocents the jihadis kill on purpose, but that's the reality we face.
The Pakistani government protests to quiet government critics, but quietly they approve. If the drone strikes are part of a campaign to defeat the jihadis that includes Pakistani ground forces exploiting the drone strikes, the strikes can help.
If the drone strikes are done mostly in isolation as drive-by-killings of even really bad guys, they will hurt if done too much. Certainly, it may be worth the risk if the objective is worth it--such as taking a shot at killing bin Laden or preventing a terrorist attack during the vulnerable transition period from Bush to Obama. But in isolation, this won't work.
Our pace of strikes certainly seems to have slowed since the end of last year. But they have not ended. I await to see if we will implement a campaign that addresses the jihadi problem in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region.
