On 2012-10-11, at 7:12 AM, Wojtek S wrote:
> Marv: "However, "killing these guys" augments their ranks precisely
> because innocent victims are being blown to bits. "
>
> [WS:] Exactly, what does murdering schoolgirls for wanting to have
> education have to do with USAF bombing villages?
> You seem to be
> following the red herring set up by Shane to divert attention from the
> actual issue at hand.
No one on this list supports or in any ways justifies the Taliban attack on 14 year old Malala, or the backward political character of the movement. This is what appears to me to to be the red herring in the discussion.
You're almost certainly alone in absolving the CIA drone attacks of any responsibility for creating the conditions which have nurtured the Taliban. Guerrilla movements don't arise in a vacuum. They're the product of government repression and foreign invasion. They're by nature popular movements or they wouldn't survive, much less grow. They recruit from among their neighbours in villages and slums when the latter are victimized by military operations ostensibly aimed only at the militants but inevitably encompassing the populations which harbour them. In this larger sense, Malala is further "collateral damage" of the US intervention in the Pashtun homelands. I expect most Pakistanis would also be put off by your comments, there being no evidence that the widespread outrage at the Taliban's action has made the drone strikes more acceptable.