Well I don't not what else you can really call it when you completely ignore their borders and then kill their people. Can you imagine the outrage if Mexico sent troops or aircraft into the sovereign territory of the US to kill drug cartel members? I don't think we would ever hear the end of it and it would be deemed an act of war if it happened more than once.
The propaganda worth alone of our state sponsored murder to Al Qaeda and others of predator and manned aircraft kills makes them near useless.
Excerpts from Woodward's book are hardly likely to help:
Jones did not give specifics about what he meant. The Obama administration had a "retribution" plan, one of the most sensitive and secretive of all military contingencies. The plan called for bombing about 150 identified terrorist camps in a brutal, punishing attack inside Pakistan.
Whether accurate reporting or not this is hardly going to bring the Pakistani people over to our side, it reminds me more of rhetoric used to create the climate for war.
I cannot remember any country having its airspace ignored and its people killed without the conflict spreading, its somewhat like the no fly zones over Iraq before the war of aggression by Bush junior.
The Pakistan government is in an impossible position:
It cannot stop the US doing whatever it wants to do, we are deaf to Pakistan's concerns that this will make their situation worse and increase the numbers of their own people being drawn into radical groups.
We are increasing the number of attacks
The flurry of drone strikes continued Tuesday amid reports of a new attack by pilotless Predator or Reaper aircraft on a Taliban compound near Wana in South Waziristan. If confirmed, it would bring the total number of drone attacks in September to 21, far outstripping the previous monthly record of 12 strikes, reached in January, according to numbers compiled by the Web site Long War Journal.
It's not the number of radicals killed as this appears to be fairly small but the number related to what we charmingly call 'collateral damage' that is the problem. Often based on shaky evidence at best people are killed by remote control, I can understand the ensuing anger.
I question the ability to fight terrorism by this method, I strongly believe if we continue to ignore the wishes of the weak Pakistani government that we will in fact make the situation worse. This will again help to roll back any progress that might have been made in Afghanistan.
These murderous attacks without the support of the Pakistani people and the complete disregard for their sovereign territory will only fuel fundamentalist and radical groups. I cannot for the life of me find any logic apart from internal consumption in the US for them to continue.
Its easy to spread the hypothesis that the US is at war with Islam when it is muslims that are dying, whether or not this is correct it can be used as an argument by those we are fighting to draw more recruits.
Hate begets hate; violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness. We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love.
Martin Luther King(1958)
If we were a true ally of Pakistan we would find a better way, our response to their latest tragedy of the floods was lackluster at best and its reporting in the US a telltale sign of our lack of genuine support. We missed a golden opportunity to shine and convince the Pakistani people of our honorable intent. The radical groups came out of the tragedy smelling of roses.