@Uzz You are very much entitled to your opinion, but I take exception to what I think you are saying. Do you really think that we who've served in Afghanistan have a fundamental disregard for civilians? Do you believe our pride and enthusiasm for our work trumps our humanism and compassion?
Vets I know that have killed civilians are haunted by it. It's nothing they intended to do, but the nature of war brought it about. Even when their actions were reasonable or the full result unforseeable, this still holds true.
Honest questions: what in your opinion do you think we are up against? How do you propose we better deal with it?
As for the drones, they do tremendous damage to the leadership of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and to a lesser extent al-Qa'ida. The TTP is fundamentally a weaker organization because of the drone campaign. A lot of foreign baddies have been set back by it too: Lashkar-i-Tayiba, Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, etc al. It's kept the NWFP from becoming a militant nexus capable of regional harm. Considering the stakes in Pakistan alone (populous, weak and nuclear armed), there has been a return.
The worst part is it comes with a civilian toll. From poor decisions on who to host to wrong intelligence to mistimed attacks, there have been a lot of innocent lives reduced to bloated, mangled corpses under rubble.
It is a fair criticism to say the campaign enflames militants sensitivities and provides a powerful recruiting tool. I am not sure that on the balance swings it to being a net negative strategy. Looking at those successfully targeted, there are some big wins with big consequences. Nek Mohammed was able to turn his lashkar into a force capable of routing the Pakistani military--an inept force to be fair. Strikes in 2012-2013 reduced the TTP from an alarmingly cohesive organization to a splintered and more manageable foe.
Yemen is harder--a lot harder--to apply such methods. Al-Qa'ida there is as much a tribal militia as a threatening transnational terrorist organization. Senior leadership there is likely following the proven template of expanding local concerns into a wider jihad, but they're a ways out yet. Even with the upswing in intensity in the last year, it's still a tediously local conflict with fuzzy, weak groups. It'd be very, very difficult to bring drone strikes into that in a productive way. I see that being a far better example of how it's a failing strategy than anything in Pakistan.