The Real Effects of Drone Attacks

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/25/pakistan-drone-study-stanford_n_1911555.html?utm_hp_ref=daily-brief%3Futm_source%3DDailyBrief&utm_campaign=092512&utm_medium=email&utm_content=NewsEntry&utm_term=Daily+Brief

Yep.

The elites of our country especially do an incredibly sloppy job at handling foreign affairs and dealing with other people in general who are not of their "own." They seem to think/perceive that they can do anything they'd like, without consequence.

This drone policy, I have thought, is counter-productive, because a) the Taliban are always the first ones who are able to show up and repair damage and compensate for losses (as per the custom of the area) and b) spawning more militants in the international jihad through the loss of civilian life.

It's just aggravating the situation while doing little to stem the tide of the insurgency.

And the proof of that is that we're losing to the insurgency in Afghanistan, both through military attacks from the Taliban, the fact that they have effective and defacto governance over most of Afghanistan (beneath the Karzai regime) and through "green on blue" attacks from the Afghan National Army.

You can't beat an insurgent army militarily, especially not one with a popular base of support within the general population and certainly not one operating in such a remote and difficult to maneuver area such as Afghanistan. It's the lesson that the English never learned from their campaigns with the Irish. And yet the "great" powers still haven't figured it out in the present day.

When people don't want you there, the only way to solve the problem is through genocide or through acquiescing to THEIR needs, desires, wishes and wants.

I don't think we want the former label applied to us. We've done a lousy job defining our interests, goals and priorities in Afghanistan and Iraq for that matter.

And that is how everything is crumbling for us in both countries, in spite of the "gains" that we've made to the contrary.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/09/201292510340480469.html

It's our priorities and perspectives and attitudes that are/were the problem.

And it's the fault of our leaders specifically and the culture(s) that they engender up at the top.

Technically, it's not anyone's personal fault, because that was how they were raised and socialized as adults.

But it is the fault of the leadership when they fail to act effectively in light of their apparent downfalls.

And that's where the responsibility piece kicks in, when push comes to actual shove.

Think about it.

Cause we are going to lose this one according to our present definitions of success.

Most we can do now is make sure that the Afghans can run the Taliban out of Afghanistan.

And, that's about it.

"Victorious warriors win first, and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first, and then seek to win." -Sun Tzu.

The latter is what the American leadership does.

And it's apparent in the ways that they operate and the ways that they behave and the ways that they generally interact with the world.

They don't think things through.

They don't base themselves in facts and solid reasoning.

They don't even seem to concern themselves with lived world evidence and empirical facts that create a highly nuanced and complicated picture of the world that's outside of their brain's perceptions and brain's conceptions.

They just seem to do whatever they want to for whatever whim that comes from their brain at a moment's notice for small minded "gains" that inevitably turn to losses, even after accomplishing them.

And that's how their brains work.

That's how we get the world that we get.

Think about it.