Convoy ambush in Waziristan leaves 17 dead

I wonder if the mainstream media will report Pakistan the way they're reporting Iraq?

We've got another slightly unusual handling of the news from The News International in Pakistan. The guerrillas are being labeled with the term "miscreants." Check it out.

MIRAN SHAH: Seventeen security men were martyred and 13 injured when miscreants attacked a convoy of security forces in Madakhel area of North Waziristan tribal region on Wednesday.

Armed men exploded a remote-controlled bomb and opened firing with automatic weapons on a security forces convoy in Madakhel area, killing 17 and wounding 13 security men.
(The News)

Now Pakistan is probably in for it. The tribal conflicts go back for hundreds of years in that region. Pakistan can't win this war. CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS and NBC may be expected to start keeping tabs on the number of dead from the Pakistani military.

Only kidding. American media is too egocentric for that. We didn't even keep track of the British dead, from what I remember (I suppose the BBC took care of that body count). Proximity is news, after all.

I'm serious about the guerrilla warfare thing, however. If insurgency cannot be defeated, then it's just a matter of time before al Qaeda or some other competing irregular military force dominates the world at the expense of nation-states.

The impossibility of defeating an insurgency appears to figure prominently in the anti-war position, but it's a myth. England completely subjugated Scotland despite fierce and enduring resistance. The United States put down a popular insurgency in the Philippine islands as an offshoot of the Spanish-American war--and the islands were better for it despite the brutality of the conflict. Portugal had nearly cleared Angola of a three-pronged insurgency (supported by Angola's neighbors), when the fascist Portuguese government was toppled via a military coup. Portugal made a weak attempt at reconciling the factions, then bailed. A civil war lasting over 25 years ensued, with a staggering loss of life.