Droning on and on

I can't understand why people would get upset about a foreign power constantly orbiting armed drones over their heads, occasionally hurling thunderbolts like some would-be Zeus. I mean, we'd be OK with that, wouldn't we?

Col David Kilcullen, formerly a senior adviser to Gen David Petraeus, the US commander in the region, told a Congressional hearing: "We need to call off the drones."

"I realise that they do damage to the al-Qaeda leadership, but... the drone strikes are highly unpopular. They are deeply aggravating to the population and they've given rise to a feeling of anger that coalesces the population around the extremists and leads to spikes of extremism.

"The current path that we are on is leading us to loss of Pakistani government control over its own population."

Col Kilcullen, who has also informally advised the Obama administration and British government, said yesterday: “The Pakistani population sees the drones as neo-colonial, and they are especially unpopular in the Punjab, where there is a rising militancy.”

Steve Coll, president of the New America Foundation, said the administration was "acknowledging that there is an interaction between the attacks and political instability and are re-evaluating the costs and benefits of these attacks".

I'm not sure there ever was a first evaluation of the costs vs. benefits. Remotely taking out some al Qada lackey from 20,000 feet may be instant gratification, but somewhere we lost sight of the bigger picture. If killing a handful of the bad guys turns a nuclear-armed Muslim nation against you, is that really progress?