Saturday, February 14, 2009

On the drone attack: Was I dreaming? Or did the NYT detele the most interesting statement in today's paper?

I am confused and feel cheated. Today's NYTimes has an article on the drone attack on a community in the Tribal Areas of Pakistan. I would swear that I found a sentence that indicated that the Pakistanis were bothered that the American drones were attacking only those insurgents who were crossing into Afghanistan to attack civilians, the implication being that they wanted the Americans also to attack the Taliban who were active inside Pakistan. Unfortunately I did not copy the article as it stood at about 6:30 this a.m. What I can find now seems to have been changed -- at least I find no such statement in this article.

So now I'm wondering if I'm dreaming. So my statement on the matter has to be tempered by the possibility that I'm crazy [don't ask Rita, my dear wife]. For the moment I have to change the title: but I still wonder ...

What I posted a litter earlier today was the following:

A new complaint: "You're ignoring our bad guys."

Tucked in today's New York Times article on the drone attack in Pakistan is a new wrinkle. All along we have been reading that the Pakistani government has complained that the drones are killing civilians. This article says that the Pakistani government complains that the attacks only kill Taliban and Al Qaeda who are invading Afghanistan. Now the objection is, "Why don't you kill our Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters, the ones that attack people in Pakistan?" Maybe I've missed it before, but this is a new twist on Pakistan's complaints about drones.
Another new twist, at least to me, is that the drones are being launched inside Pakistan. Clearly the relationship of the Americans and Pakistanis has been changing. If all this is true, and confident information on what's going on in that part of the world is elusive, we might hope for some meaningful progress in dealing with the insurgency that has long been nourished in the tribal areas of Pakistan.


[Click on the title to link to The New York Times February 15, 2009 U.S. Drones Kill up to 32 in Pakistan By PIR ZUBAIR SHAH.]

A report on the event in the Telegraph:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/4620641/US-drone-attack-kills-25-Taliban-in-Pakistan.html

A report on the event in Dawn: http://www.dawn.com/2009/02/14/top2.htm

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