So I was reading about Obama’s decision to send 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan, and this story lead floored me…

"WASHINGTON (AFP) — In his first major military move, President Barack Obama approved the deployment of 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan, saying they were needed "to stabilize a deteriorating situation."

His "first major military move"????

Aside from being opposed to sending more troops to Afghanistan (ask me about this later), I’m appalled that the ongoing US bombing of Pakistan has been completely dismissed by the corporate media as a non-event. "Suspected" US drones (it’s all very hush hush, but out in the open) have struck Pakistan at least 3 times (including yesterday) since Obama took office, killing upwards of 80 people.

There is very little serious reporting (and no, I don’t count mainstream media parroting US official claims as serious reporting) on who is being killed in these attacks. But NPR reported earlier this month that 130 civilians have been killed in such cross border attacks since August 2008. NPR called this a "conservative estimate."

If you don’t want to hear my opinion on the matter (since who the hell am I?) maybe you’d be interested to know what David Kilcullen had to say about the current US attacks on Pakistan. In case you’ve never heard of him (I hadn’t), Kilcullen is a former Special Advisor for Counterinsurgency to the Secretary of State and he was senior counterinsurgency advisor to General David Petraeus, in Baghdad in 2007. He recently told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: "…the current approach is having a severely de-stabilizing effect on Pakistan and risks spreading the conflict further, or even prompting the collapse of the Pakistani state, a scenario that would dwarf any of the problems we have yet faced in Iraq or Afghanistan."

So there you go. I,and a counter-insurgency expert, with whom I share almost no political affinity, agree attacking Pakistan is a big deal. Anyone else?

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