I’d suggest that you’re missing the point. It’s possible to believe, as I firmly do, that we have become overly reliant on drone strikes, that we’re too quick to employ them, that they’ve substituted for more meaningful and substantial efforts in AfPak, and that even when they succeed in hitting militants they’re generally counterproductive.

But the position you’re taking seems, to me at least, to be doctrinaire, inflexible, and manifestly wrong. There are no irreplaceable leaders among the insurgents, and very few whose death might make a meaningful impact. But Mehsud tops that list. He’s been imaginative in his tactics, and provided charismatic leadership at the head of his movement. If the early reports are true, and we killed Mehsud along with some members of his family (the term ‘civilian,’ in these circumstances, becomes problematic) then that strikes me as the extremely rare instance in which an air strike would actually have been justified and productive.

A desire to “STOP THE KILLINGS” does nothing other than secure your own moral rectitude. There are two, equal dangers here – that the killing of Mehsud will be used by proponents to justify a generally counterproductive campaign of remote strikes, and that the others killed in the strike will be seized upon by opponents to argue that all strikes are unjustified. There’s a prudent middle ground here, restricting strikes to the unusual confluence of circumstances in which the targets are genuinely high value, the confidence extremely good, and the collateral damage minimal. That requires a balancing test, not inflexible opposition.

I have not seen anything from the Pakistani Taliban, if there is nothing by the end of their day, I expect he is still around, although possibly injured.