War Handwavium

http://www.salon.com/2012/02/05/u_s_drones_targeting_rescuers_and_mourners/singleton/

During a three month period of drone attacks in Pakistan:

at least 50 civilians were killed in follow-up strikes when they had gone to help victims. More than 20 civilians have also been attacked in deliberate strikes on funerals

top Obama counter-Terrorism adviser John Brennan said this about drone strikes in Pakistan: “in the last year, ‘there hasn’t been a single collateral death” … “a detailed examination by the Bureau of 116 CIA ‘secret’ drone strikes in Pakistan since August 2010 has uncovered at least 10 individual attacks in which 45 or more civilians appear to have died.”

A historical tidbit the Republicans would rather not talk about: Reagan allowed Pakistan to develop nuclear weapons.

http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/003139.html

Pakistan’s conventional military numbers around 500,000 troops.

The Taliban numbers around 20,000 fighters.

Normally, the Taliban fight with guerrilla war tactics. Pakistan’s military uses counter-insurgency tactics. But for the Taliban to actually take control of Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, they would have to switch from guerilla tactics to state-warfare tactics. They would have to switch from attacking from hidden positions and sneaking away immediately to the kind of land warfare that allows an army to invade, conquer, and occupy a city of 300 square miles with a population of a million.

A guerrilla force of 20,000 can harass an army of 500,000, inflict damage, and cause the army to over-react, kill civilians, and lose local support. But a guerrilla force of 20,000 can not engage in a land war against 500,000 and survive.

So stop with the “Pakistan is about to fall to the Taliban” headlines already.

http://www.thenational.ae/article/20090508/REVIEW/705079996/1008