I don't know about that second paragraph. The key issue is that you have only a weak central government and a lot of regional autonomy. This has costs and benefits. The costs are that the central authorities have less control. The benefits is that they don't have to use resources that could help find kidnappers in Islamabad to control tribesmen who are fiercely independent.

In the end, what's needing is an understanding that drones have two problems fundamentally associated with them. The first is that they are low-knowledge operations and thus the fact is that it is likely that the drone operators don't have a clear picture of what is really going on, and the second is that a single drone operator may be operating many drones at once, increasing the likelihood of mistakes.

If we are going to engage in targetted killings, nothing beats boots on the ground.