From a very good Los Angeles Times story about Pakistan’s wariness about invading north Waziristan:

“These drone attacks are disadvantageous for the U.S.,” said Fakhrul Islam, a tribal areas expert at Peshawar University. “The Pakistani population isn’t happy with these attacks, and they give the Taliban a chance to talk about the killing of innocent people as a result of drone strikes.”

Perhaps we truly have no choice but to conduct airstrikes in Yemen. I don’t know enough about Yemen to say, but I’ll consider the proposition. But even so: this exact same critique and objection applies. If we truly are concerned about al-Qaeda’s growing presence there, then it’s asinine not to think that lobbing missiles at the place will make the population less sympathetic to al-Qaeda. And yet that — and worse — is what our very serious politicians propose we do.

I keep going back to this demand-side security point. It’s never sufficient just to observe that a terrorist group has a presence in Country X. We have to ask ourselves: what are the conditions that allowed for said terrorist group to take root. If we don’t, we simply can’t devise an effective strategy against the terrorist group; and we come close to guaranteeing that we’ll flail and make the situation worse.