‘the taliban’ isn’t a national army, so trying to measure it in absolute terms - as if it were a national force - is equally unhelpful: it recruits, according to strategy and circs, from a pretty bottomless well.
Nevertheless, there are a finite number of fighters loyal to the Taliban, and that number is somewhere in the tens of thousands. Again, we’re not talking about the Third Reich here. 4,000 casualties is a significant number.
I think you’re stretching ‘finite’. The Taliban may not be the same as Jihad but they promote a pretty powerful message to the same demographic.
That doesn’t mean they can put millions or even 50,000+ men in the field. They can cow villages to their will, certainly, but they are not and never have been a large fighting force.
I’m glad as well. I can’t really imagine making the argument that we should consciously employ methods and tactics that make warfare more dangerous and costly too ourselves just so that we will feel less inclined to do so in the future. I can just imagine the conversation with the pilots.
“Lt. Baldric, while we have the capability of accomplishing this mission without any danger on your part, we have decided that in the interest of future generations we will need to have some skin in the game so to speak. To that end rather than sending in a drone you yourself will fly the mission. Just to make sure its not too easy you will be flying at low altitude in a biplane painted bright red white and blue with the words ‘I’m an American pilot shoot me down and win a prize’ emblazoned on the bottom of the craft in Arabic. While it is unlikely that you will return you can die safe in the knowledge that your death will convince those higher-ups never to do anything so bone-headed as this ever again. All right off you go then, cheerio.”
A couple of things. If the wiki for the subject of drone attacks in Pakistan is correct, the U.S. is using Predator and Reaper drones to conduct the attacks. Unlike follow-on drones such as the General Atomics Avenger or the Lockheed Martin RQ-170 Sentinel, neither the Reaper nor the Predator are stealthy, and indeed, would require fighter escort or SEAD in order to operate against an enemy equipped past the level of the Taliban or other non-state actors. Pakistan has an Air Force with relatively modern interceptor aircraft, including F-16s and JF-17s. Pakistan can shoot down these drones anytime they wish, therefore the implication is that their Government is fine with what the U.S. is doing. Namely, eliminating political enemies of the regime in Islamabad.
As to certain tactics used during the drone campaign, namely, “double-tapping”, I had linked in a previous thread to a Pakistani journalist who brought up the point that: in the incredibly remote places where most of the drone attacks are occurring, the first responders are also going to be Taliban or Taliban-sympathizers. Pakistani government or NGO aid workers aren’t going to be the ones showing up to render aid.
I reiterate the point I made in a previous thread that the U.S. shouldn’t be there and the internal politics of Pakistan, Yemen, and everywhere else that drone attacks happen are not sufficient reason for the U.S. to be killing people. But I did want to point out that the current drone campaign in Pakistan has to be happening with the tacit approval of at least the Pakistani military.
Remember the neutron bomb? I never could understand the furor over that. It sounded like a fine idea to me. But then, so do drone strikes.
Yeah, I had thought of the fact that Pakistan COULD shoot the drones down if they want. The thing is, the Pakistani government (like many other governments in that part of the world) walks a fine line. On the one had, they want to be at least nominally allied to the US and are afraid of their more radical population, since if that population turns on them they could be overthrown. On the other hand, many of those same radicals are in even the highest levels of those governments, and sympathies for them permeate all levels of government.
I agree that we shouldn’t be over there and hope that Obama is able to get us out of there asap, as he mostly did with our forces in Iraq. Drones are just a tool, in the end, and the amount of harm they do, while not negligent is vastly overblown in these threads when looked at in perspective. The key though is we shouldn’t be over there at all, not which tool we are using to persecute the war. The very nature of our being over there is causing harm regardless of whether it’s our soldiers on the field, our air craft, our cruise missiles or our drones.
ETA: Great post btw. 
I’m sure there were defenders at the Battle of Wisby, wearing their riveted mail hauberks and leather leg armor, who thought “Full plate and greataxes? WTF???”
Maybe they should do something about the people the drones are trying to target, rather than whining about the US use of drones? Or do something about their craptastic government that can’t or won’t shoot them down?
Like others have said, would they prefer F-15s, F-16s, B-52s and B-1s that carry thousands of pounds of bombs to smaller, albeit still relatively large drones that carry at most 1500 lbs of ordnance, usually Hellfire missiles with 20 lb warheads, and occasionally 500 lb Paveways.
Maybe if their craptastic government was given time to do it, they’d handle things their own way?
If you’re not killing your enemy by cleaving their skull in half with an axe you’re doing it wrong.
As for all the comparisons to cruise missiles, I guess everyone forgot the “cruise missile liberal” epithet? I think it’s still useful, though it does appear to have fallen out of fashion.
First, that would likely make them traitors in the eyes of their neighbors; American collaborators. Plus, it makes them targets for American drones.
Doesn’t seem like very civilized behavior to me…
“As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil that they set out to destroy.” - Christopher Dawson, The Judgment of the Nations [1942]
So what you’re saying is that in the face of deadly attacks on Pakistani civilians, the Pakistani government should let the terrorists win, and do their dirty work for them?
How do you know that’s how we do it [casually]?
*we’ve “created” enemies for 15yrs. So what.
:rolleyes: So what we are doing is creating more of what we claim to be fighting. Like fighting fire by throwing gasoline on it.
Yep, that’s how the military-industrial complex got to be this big: you incite.
Also, I think 15 years is a bit naive. This empire has been doing its thing since at least the Philippine-American War in the very late 19th century.
Then we ought to be neck-deep in Filipino terrorists by now.
Regards,
Shodan
If you haven’t heard, everything is fine now - the country got independence.