More Than Drones

Way back in the last millennium, when Europa still enjoyed visiting combat ops on each others heads, vKluck's extreme right wing of the vSchlieffen Plan had to endure extreme conditions. Old school footslogging with real horse power maintained an amazingly frantic pace to cover 40 miles a day with full pack and gear. 

When adjutants saw the truppen were dusty, dirty and increasingly out of step - that was cool. When closer inspection revealed they reeked of liq liq liquor and were blind drunk off their assets - they freaked and tattled taled it to General Teutonicus Furor himself.

vKluck blew off their inappropriate handwringing and worrying about the wrong thing:

"Abnormal requirements demand abnormal stimuli"

Could this be not unlike the aperitif betwixt Great Satan and Land of the Pure?

1st glancers and the underwhelmingly uninformed might be forgiven somewhat for thinking of unlinking the dysfunctional nation/state hook up betwixt Great Satan and her only new clear rebellious client army with an illiterate nation state attached. 

"Valuable Allies" that harbor jerks, creeps and killers that torment the Stan and attack American forces from a safe as milk no go zone (which happily happens to enjoy a thin veneer of the sovereignty dodge) ideally could be stymied on the battlefield.

A new clear powered frenemy (just replaced Great Britain as #5 in the Big 5!!) nation state in Intolerantopolis is a diff critter!

As difficult as it might be to conceive of a long-term engagement with Pakistan right now, extremists are less likely to find easy refuge in a globally integrated, democratic, and prosperous Pakistan. Moreover, the stronger Pakistan's democratic institutions become, the less room the Pakistani military and the ISI will have to maneuver -- even if that change is slow and incremental. 

In the process of pursuing strategic depth, and trying to queer the mix on India's "Cold Start Strat" the military has run Pakistan into the ground:

The reckless escalation is likely intended to demonstrate to Washington that nothing is off-limits to Pakistan's Afghan surrogates, and it may even be designed to push Washington to rethink its involvement in helping India expand its presence in Kabul. Pakistan's military believes, somewhat plausibly, that India has used U.S. military cover to increase its intelligence assets on Pakistan's western border, which would allow New Delhi to foment insurgency in Pakistan's resource-rich province of Baluchistan. 

  Admiral Mike's fun friendly deadly psychic warning that Land of the Pure needs to get in gear and handle their murderous kindred spirit proxies or Great Satan will only be too glad to get all unilaterally undulating avec guerre' and deliver precise destruction onto their girl hating heads.


Yet before getting all dosed up beyond repair on Drones Gone Wild! and getting all combatty sans smart power, it may be cool to zoom out of the Drones Alone or More than Drones mindset

Drones make it easier to carry out that threat. But the administration must weigh any expansion of drone strikes against the need to maintain a relationship with Pakistan and promote its moderate political forces in what has become a fateful domestic power struggle. 

 Drones will remain invaluable to preventing terrorist attacks against U.S. targets. But they cannot become a substitute for sustained efforts at nurturing moderate and representative government in the Muslim world. That is as true in Yemen and Somalia as it is in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Pic - "I'll just let you know that we are not going to allow these kinds of attacks to go on. I'm not going to talk about how we're going to respond" with Wicked Whitney and Kristy Kreme