LIFE ACCORDING TO THE TALIBAN - SHOOT 14-YEAR-OLD WHO INSULTS YOUR BELIEFS ON TREATMENT OF WOMEN

Declan Walsh covers the story in The New York Times today of the school girl in Pakistan, shot in the head at close range by members of Pakistan's Taliban, because they objected to her campaign for universal education for girls.

Members of the Taliban give the impression of being from an age of unenlightenment, hundreds of years ago, where, if you don't like what someone else says or thinks, you kill him or her, in this case, a 14-year-old schoolgirl, Malala Yousafzai.

OBAMA ORDERS INCREASE IN U.S. DRONE ATTACKS IN PAKISTAN

Should the U.S. under Barack Obama be sending drones flying over Pakistan and firing missiles at Taliban leaders, and, in the process, killing their families as well? I argue, no. These are extra-judicial killings of people only suspected to be enemy combatants. Whether they are or not should first be determined in a court of law. Who knows how many innocent men, women and children have been incinerated by U.S. attacks from the sky?

And, furthermore, what gives the U.S. the right to kill members of the Taliban? Yes, they are backward, illiterate and often fanatical. But does this warrant their execution and destruction by U.S. attack drones?

Scott Shane reports in today's The New York Times that Obama has ordered an increase in these drone attacks:

"The White House has authorized an expansion of the C.I.A.’s drone program in Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas, officials said this week, to parallel the president’s decision, announced Tuesday, to send 30,000 U.S. more troops to Afghanistan. American officials are talking with Pakistan about the possibility of striking in Baluchistan for the first time — a controversial move since it is outside the tribal areas — because that is where Afghan Taliban leaders are believed to hide."

I argue that these drone attacks will create 10 more enemies of the U.S. for each member of the Taliban killed. And 100 more for each innocent man, woman and child killed by mistake.

Americans claim their land is the land of the free and the home of the brave. Yet the American use of lethal drones tells the whole world that the U.S. is also a military killer that causes death and destruction in poor Pakistani villages.

STOP DRONE MISSILES KILLING DOZENS OF VILLAGERS IN WAZIRISTAN

Who is the person in the Obama administration who thinks firing missiles into Pakistani villages and killing dozens of men, women and children is effective? Oh, because they are Taliban and Al Qaeda types? It seems to me that everyone in poor Pakistani villages in Waziristan is an "Al Qaeda type." And many certainly are Taliban because they live in a backward uneducated society that has embraced Islamic fundamentalism.

But that does not mean the United States should kill them. And under what rule of law under international law does the U.S. have the right to enter another country's territory and fire missiles from unmanned drones at people's homes?

No matter how many Talibani Americans kill by these missile raids, others will take their place, probably in the ratio of 100 recruits for each person killed. This American program is doomed to utter failure Obama thinks it will decimate the Talibani or the "Al Qaeda types."

Have I mentioned the hatred and animus that these drones are stoking in the hearts of all Pakistanis? No wonder the leader of the Pakistani Taliban warns that his fellow believers will somehow mount an attack on Washington D.C.

Pamela Constable reports for The Washington Post:

"Baitullah Mehsud, an Islamist leader from the South Waziristan tribal area in northwest Pakistan, called several international news agencies in Pakistan to assert responsibility for the armed occupation of the police training compound that ended with 11 people dead.

"He also told reporters that he was planning to attack targets in the U.S. capital in retaliation for more than 30 strikes by unmanned U.S. aircraft that have targeted suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban sanctuaries in northwest Pakistan near the border with Afghanistan.

""Soon we will launch an attack on Washington that will amaze everyone in the world," Mehsud told the Associated Press. In a separate phone conversation, he told Agence France-Presse that his forces had carried out the police academy attack near the city of Lahore as an act of revenge for the U.S. drone raids. "There will be more such attacks," he said."

As I said, this reaction is perfectly understandable. If you were a poor Pakistani farmer in some small village, and your neighbor's house was incinerated by an American missile fired from an unmanned drone and piloted by some CIA type thousands of miles away, and you saw your neighbor's whole family, men, women, children all dead from the attack, what would your reaction be?