I aqree it may be impossible to quantify, and anecdotal is just what it is. Myself, I certainly cannot make a truly supportable assessment from here, but people on the ground in these areas, perhaps less subjectively objective and with more knowledge, have made such determinations.
If those are a common every day everywhere occurrence to those people, that is not immediately acceptable to my mind. At the same time one needs to strike at your opponents the best way possible when the opportunity arises... and would assume for the most part this has to be some fairly isolated, not overly numerous areas. Surely they cannot carpet the entire country with constant drones.
I really wish you addressed your opinions on if the US begins to withdraw and let these regions just do as they do, is that better or worse, what are the ramifications? If we have no idea then it would be hard to fault the US for sticking in there, keeping the world in order, if only in our own interests, as best we can. There were some hiccups in our Cold War, as are natural in a random world, but US long term policy has, my opinion, helped keep the world a lot from its natural blood thirstiness ... even though we have had a lot anyhow.
And even with the violence that we do have over here, there is something more manageable about it, as well.
Thanks for the tips.
I took the liberty of bolding what you wanted to discuss.
The ramifications have to be understood in terms of what happens if we leave vs. stay. But before that, one has to define what our interests are.
In AfPak, our interests are not letting the area, become a GLOBAL breeding ground for terrorism i.e. the situation we had there with the AQ training camps before 9-11.
I'm a little foggy on this, but the idea is the Taliban allowed the mujahideen to operate freely, as they are both extreme religious fundamentalist types.
Anyways - what was called for was not so called "nationbuilding" (counter-insurgency) - all that was really needed was to go after any organized AQ traing camps, and hit them again, and again. repeat as necessaryy
It's obviously not so simple, as even now the Taliban have jihaded to Syria, so it's not like you can just seal off Afg/Paki.
But the basic idea of NOT a counter-insurgency strategy; rather then just counter-terrorism would have led to a lot less grief for the ISAF forces,'
and ( iIMHO! )would not have allowed the Taliban to recruit outside of N. Waziristan.
It would be similar to keeping a lid on a boiling pot - some spill over, but not the boiling over we have now as a result of our policy.
Where the Paki Taliban are financing/recruiting the Afg, and vice vesa - afterall Paki, and Afganistan are not ours to stabilize/build, just "degrade' organized AQ.
In Yemen, we do the opposite -we never tried a counter-insurgency, just a counter-terrorism. Which is always a more sensible approach;
the problem being we are relying mostly on Yemeni INTEL, since it is difficult to get it, as we don't have the boots we do in AfPak.
So I can only tell you to look for a middle path, one that recognizes there are, and will continue to be really bad guys, that need to be droned.
But we have to do so with utmost caution, which we most decidely are NOT DOING now.
I mentioned some criteria, 1. only true high value targets, and not localized AQ.2. Only those we know as really being a threat now,
not this idea they will be some day -they may or may not, but since we are now radicalizing thepopulace, we are pushing the populace to hate us,
and radicalize what would just be ordinary local AQ, or even those fighters in their stalemated civil war.
I think the civil war is over (not sure), here is a chronology to help see the perpspective
Yemen News - Breaking World Yemen News - The New York Times