ARE WE MAKING AN EVEN WORSE MISTAKE?

In the past, we've come close to indiscriminate air strikes in Afghanistan and that's alienated millions of Afghanis. John Cole found a PRI report that our use of drones in Pakistan may be even less discriminating:

SHACHTMAN: Well there’s certainly very different rules that apply from Afghanistan to Pakistan. You know in Afghanistan the air strikes have got to be very tightly constrained. You know you really can’t drop a bomb in Afghanistan without layers and layers and layers of approval. And you have to be very careful about civilian casualties. In Pakistan if the media reports are at all correct you know you’re having two, three, four dozen people get killed at a time in these drone attacks and let me tell you they are not all terrorists or militants. There’s got to be some civilians involved when you’re getting that many people killed at once. So there’s a very different feel to the air war in Pakistan. And they don’t seem to be taking the kind of care that they do in Afghanistan.

If this is true, then this report in the LA Times is very disturbing:

Drone attacks may be expanded in Pakistan
U.S. officials seek to push CIA drone strikes into the major city of Quetta to try to pressure Pakistan into pursuing Taliban leaders based there.

By Greg Miller and Julian E. Barnes
December 14, 2009
LA Times

Reporting from Washington - Senior U.S. officials are pushing to expand CIA drone strikes beyond Pakistan's tribal region and into a major city in an attempt to pressure the Pakistani government to pursue Taliban leaders based in Quetta.

The proposal has opened a contentious new front in the clandestine war. The prospect of Predator aircraft strikes in Quetta, a sprawling city, signals a new U.S. resolve to decapitate the Taliban.

In case you are wondering, we aren't the Pakistanis favorite country:

Pakistan: Percent responding Favorable, all years measured