At first these articles don’t seem to line up. The headline in the LA Times reads “Drone attacks may be expanded in Pakistan“, but Newsweek says Obama is firmly against any expansion of the attacks. Here’s an excerpt from the LA Times piece (via Kevin Drum):

Senior U.S. officials are pushing to expand CIA drone strikes beyond Pakistan’s tribal region and into a major city in an attempt to pressure the Pakistani government to pursue Taliban leaders based in Quetta.

The proposal has opened a contentious new front in the clandestine war. The prospect of Predator aircraft strikes in Quetta, a sprawling city, signals a new U.S. resolve to decapitate the Taliban. But it also risks rupturing Washington’s relationship with Islamabad.

The concern has created tension among Obama administration officials over whether unmanned aircraft strikes in a city of 850,000 are a realistic option. Proponents, including some military leaders, argue that attacking the Taliban in Quetta — or at least threatening to do so — is crucial to the success of the revised war strategy President Obama unveiled last week.

“If we don’t do this — at least have a real discussion of it — Pakistan might not think we are serious,” said a senior U.S. official involved in war planning. “What the Pakistanis have to do is tell the Taliban that there is too much pressure from the U.S.; we can’t allow you to have sanctuary inside Pakistan anymore.”

Let me tell you this: if we launch remote missile attacks into a densely populated urban area, a move which will almost certainly result in the deaths of God only knows how many civilians with each attack, Pakistan’s worst problem won’t be the Taliban. No, the real problem will be the millions of enraged Pakistanis, who will be justly infuriated by our callous disregard for civilian life and for Pakistani sovereignty. There won’t be any of this shrug and a “What can we do?” from the Pakistani government, members of whom will be similarly enraged by the attacks. It astonishes me that anyone thinks this is a good idea. Fortunately, Newsweek is reporting Obama is opposed to this move:

One person standing in the way of expanded missile strikes: President Obama. Five administration officials tell NEWSWEEK that the president has sided with political and diplomatic advisers who argue that widening the scope of the drone attacks would be risky and unwise. Obama is concerned that firing missiles into urban areas like Quetta, where intelligence reports suggest that Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar and other high-level militants have sometimes taken shelter, would greatly increase the risk of civilian casualties. It would also draw protests from Pakistani politicians and military leaders, who have been largely quiet about the drone attacks as long as they’ve been confined to the country’s out-of-sight border region. The White House has been encouraged by Pakistan’s own recent military efforts to root out militants along the Afghan border, and it does not want to jeopardize that cooperation.

The marginal security gains we would hope to make by  launching missile strikes into Quetta in the hopes of bagging high profile members of Al Qaeda or the Taliban, is not worth the civilian dead, or the risk of rupturing our alliance with Pakistan. And this should be a reminder of the mindset that comes to afflict those that manage difficult and messy wars; desperate for success, they reach for every incremental gain in the war, heedless of the extreme drawbacks of their decisions. The end result of that course can only ever be a war lost, only at much greater damage to our standing than what we would suffer by limiting ourselves. We had better hope to God that Obama keeps a lid on these people.