Pakistan's Anger Over Air Strikes Was Inevitable

When last Saturday's NATO airstrike killed 24 Pakistani soldiers and injured 13 others, the retaliation by the Pakistani government was only to be expected. For month's, now, the U.S. and NATO have been conducting not-always-so-surgical strikes against the Taliban in that country. Unfortunately, innocent citizens -- including some children -- and the Pakistani military have been been either killed, maimed, or injured in the process.

Since Obama took office, unmanned drone attacks have been escalated in an effort to make the Afghanistan/Pakistan Taliban war as bloodless as possible for our own military personnel. To me, not having to suffer a potential sacrifice of losing one's own troops just makes it easier to make quick -- and possibly bad decisions -- in the battlefield. At the same time, NATO, too, has conducted airstrikes in lieu of troops on the ground.

Sadly, this "air strike" policy and its collateral deaths and injuries have put us in an extremely bad position: Winning the war but losing the hearts and minds of the people in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is as if we never learned the lessons of World War II and how hated the Germans were for their indiscriminate buzz-bombing and V1/2 rocket strikes against British citizenry.

Make no mistake about it, we needed the cooperation of Pakistanis to effectively execute the war in Afghanistan and shutdown the influence of those Taliban militants who are in hiding in Pakistan. But, now, I think we've blown it. We just might have pushed an already-deteriorating alliance into a state of hostility; thus making the possibility of winning the Afghanistan war an impossibility.