On 2012-10-10, at 3:07 PM, Wojtek S wrote:
> ...killing these guys is a good deed... I am not
> sure to what extent it is the villages rather than terrorist hideouts
> that are being blown. But inasmuch as it is innocent villagers who
> are being blown - I am all with you on this.
However, "killing these guys" augments their ranks precisely because innocent victims are being blown to bits. Attacks on civilians, intentional or otherwise, have been politically and militarily counter-productive from WW II to the present. We can assume a positive correlation in the growth of the Pakistani Taliban and the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of civilians killed and wounded in US drone attacks, many of them children:
"TBIJ reports that from June 2004 through mid-September 2012, available data indicate that drone strikes killed 2,562 - 3,325 people in Pakistan, of whom 474 - 881 were civilians, including 176 children. TBIJ reports that these strikes also injured an additional 1,228 - 1,362 individuals, according to the Stanford/NYU study."
http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/25/world/asia/pakistan-us-drone-strikes/index.html