So as we’re talking about the apparently radicalizing effect of Pakistani drone strikes on buffoonish, International M.A.L.E.-shopping Pakistani terrorists, it’s worth noting that the CIA just launched another, uh, drone strike in Pakistan, the sign of an intensifying air war that was already really intense:

This second robotic strike in three days is the latest sign that the American drone war in Pakistan has reached a new peak. There have been 34 reported attacks in Pakistan in the first 19 weeks on 2010. That’s almost as many as the 36 strikes carried out in all of 2009 2008 And these strikes are no longer against specific, named terrorists. Signs of militant activity are enough to bring in the drones.

That’s a really accelerated tempo, meaning that two explanations are possible. Either the strikes have grown — how to put this? — less discriminate. Or the number of Pakistani, uh, people engaged in “militant activity” has increased significantly during the past 19 weeks. I suppose, to be charitable, a third explanation is that we’ve recently achieved a degree of visibility not previously obtained that lets us see deeper into the Pakistani “militant activity” network. But I’ll leave it for you to determine what’s most likely. [Update: it was like 50-odd strikes in 2009 in Pakistan; Noah has corrected his original graf.]

The case for the drone strikes is pretty straightforward, if not particularly compelling: we can’t invade Pakistan; the militants are there; what direct military pressure can we otherwise apply? John Rizzo, the former CIA general counsel and Marcy-target, made a version of that argument in a recent speech:

Given questions about casualties among women, children and civilians in the Predator attacks, Rizzo said, “it would seem to me that a cleaner and more effective and, in a perverse way perhaps a more humane way, was to train, for lack of a better term, hit squads . . . to find a high-value detainee and put a bullet in his head.”

You might also try a political/economic strategy, but that’s just me. And it still leaves you with the unpalatable immediate-term choice between blowback-laden Death from Above and Nothing Direct. (And by “Nothing Direct” I mean “the Pakistani military as well.) Still, there’s also got to be something between drastically accelerated drone strikes every time a new attack/attempt appears (FOB Chapman, Abdulmutallab, Shahzad) and Nothing Direct. No easy answers, just hard choices.