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Comment by Aeolos | Hacker News Reader

"Obliterated a wedding because people where celebrating by shooting in the air."

This is the definition of evil.

How and why is the Pakistani government allowing this program to operate within their territories?

Because most of the strikes are in the Tribal areas near the border with Afghanistan where the writ of the Pakistani state doesn't really run. The Pakistani military has received some bloody noses when trying to operate in the area. Even Wikipedia is happy to classify the whole thing as a war[0]. Over 6,000 members of the Pakistani security forces have been killed, 20,000 civilians and 35,000 "insurgents".

Pakistan gets significant military aid from the US to help put down an insurgency by groups that would overthrow the state. On a realpolitik level they also get to blame the US when a strike goes wrong whereas if they were dropping their own bombs they would have to put up with the blame. Mistakes always happen in war, I'd suggest however that a drone strike has significantly more time to conduct pre-launch checks than an F16 pilot does.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_North-West_Pakistan

But the end result of all that is just that it generates even more hostility towards the US and feeds terrorism. The US is creating its own enemies this way. Again.

Cynically speaking, this is win-win for everyone involved. Except for the innocents who are killed.

The US gets to debug and optimize their assassination program "on brown people that noone cares about".

Pakistan and US also get to claim that they are "fighting terrorism". This breeds resentment and new generations of terrorists to be "fought" in the future (divide and conquer 101).

Plus, who knows when and where the droid program might come in handy in the future...

droid program?

Among other reasons, Pakistan security forces receive a lot of military aid from the US State Dept, including weapons and materials (e.g. bulletproof limousines) used by the same Pakistani officials for their own protection. I expect US support also helps as a deterrent in their problems with India as well.

My guess would be because Pakistan has had good relations with US since it's independence.

"The United States today provides extensive economic, scientific, and military assistance to Pakistan... and is Pakistan's most generous donor of foreign aid"[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistan%E2%80%93United_States...

> My guess would be because Pakistan has had good relations with US since it's independence.

More often not.

There was a period from the 1970s when Pakistan was embargoed because of its nuclear power + weapons programmes, mainly in cooperation with France. This pushed Pakistan into the Chinese camp for arms supplies where they have remained firmly lodged ever since.

During the 1980s the USA did supply some silver-bullet assets like F-16s, mainly to atagonise the Soviets in Afghanistan, but later deliveries were again embargoed and the USA only recently reimbursed their purchase fees.

The USA-Pakistan relationship is one of the text-book examples of realpolitik.

To add to that, DoD just approved sale of 8 F-16s to Pakistan (http://thediplomat.com/2016/02/us-approves-sale-of-8-f-16-bl...). The ball is in Congress' court to decide if this actually goes through... but ya. Pretty much the definition of realpolitik.

>How and why is the Pakistani government allowing this program to operate within their territories?

Because it's a powerless country, and as always those are at the mercy of the top dogs.

At best they can ask for some bargains (foreign aid, some favorable diplomatic stance, etc).

It's because we're killing their enemies.These are strikes on the TTP not the Afghani Taliban.

They could always not allow and be left to deal with Afgani collapse on their own. And with soaring and increasingly nationalistic India under Modi.

You are missing the main point of the article.

I am not. I am just at a loss why a foreign sovereign would give the US, or any other country, the license to randomly kill their own citizens.

If they did not, what could Pakistan do about it? The U.S would do so anyway covertly, and the Pakistani government would be seen to be weak, since they were powerless to stop it.

So the Pakistani government 'allows' it to at least appear in control.

They have nukes. They could easily institute a defense doctrine of nuclear retaliation tomorrow, and the terror would stop. But the reason they don't is that they are bought and paid for, both as a country via foreign aid and as individual government members via bribes (or "speaker fees", as you guys call those now).

The U.S. pays the Pakistani government for the right to use drone strikes against innocents who are prescribed as terrorists by a computer algorithm, which encourages hatred and fear and creating the very terrorists justifying U.S. giving the money for the Pakistani government to buy weapons from the U.S. to field an army to fight a war with.

Let's run with that thought. Let's say Pakistan committed to using nukes in retaliation for US drones shooting their citizens, what are they going to shoot at exactly?

They're supposedly developing longer-range capability capable of hitting some of Europe[1], but right now they might be able to hit some US military bases in the middle-east[2].

I'm not saying Pakistan isn't corrupt, but pretending that they could simply switch from their current US-friendly policy to a strategy that's openly adversarial to US-interests seems to blatantly ignore the realpolitik of the situation.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taimur_(missile)

2. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3545775.stm

You are right. I haven't considered that. They only care about the standoff with India, so it makes sense that their range only about covers her.

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