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The US version of it is a Hellfire missile from a drone remote-controlled from 2 continents away. Way more lethal, way more collateral, quite obvious to identi

The US version of it is a Hellfire missile from a drone remote-controlled from 2 continents away. Way more lethal, way more collateral, quite obvious to identify as the act of a state actor, still common practice barely anybody takes issue with.

YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago
But they only target terrorists.
erentz 8y ago
Your comparison is completely unalike. Yes the US drone war program is bad. Yes the endless war on terror is bad. But these are not the same as a tyrant poisoning anyone who becomes inconvenient to him. The closest comparison I think you could validly make would be something like the harsh treatment of Chelsea Manning or Reality Winner (or Drake, or Snowden, etc). None of which were taken out with poison or a Hellfire missile. (Edit: that’s not to excuse the treatment of those people either.)
- freeflight 8y ago
  No, it's exactly the same. Both are extrajudicial and state-sponsored killings aka assassinations. Just because many people have blind trust in the US government and the validity of its kill list aka "disposition matrix" [0] doesn't change the basic injustice of the act, which is just as unjust as poisoning some "enemy of the state". The international laws and human rights broken in both cases are exactly the same, the only difference is the methodology of the final "execution". > None of which were taken out with poison or a Hellfire missile. It's extremely naive to assume we know every drone victim ever, it's not like the US drone program is a shining beacon of transparency. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposition_Matrix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposition_Matrix
  - erentz 8y ago
    Putin targets Russian citizens that are his personal enemies because they speak up, protest, or otherwise embarrass him. He does it using poison in a manner to make sure everyone knows who did it and what the consequences are if you cross him. The US drone program does not target US citizens who speak up, protest, or embarrass the president of the USA, at the behest of just the president. (Stating the obvious, but that’s not a defense of the drone program. You’ve outlined its problems. But it’s just clearly not the same thing.)
    - freeflight 8y ago
      > The US drone program does not target US citizens who speak up, protest, or embarrass the president of the USA, at the behest of just the president. How do you know that? Does the US publish its list? No, it doesn't, so you are making that statement on literally nothing but good faith. While at the same time you use bad faith to frame the Russian version as something where Putin personally orders people killed for slighting him or some other mundane reason. The reality is both are killing "enemies of the state", justified and regulated by their own, internal, rulesets and governmental institutions. They and others have been doing so openly, and covertly for decades. Heck, this kind of stuff even has been glorified as a pop-culture export from the UK as "the agent with a license to kill". In that context, there's literally no difference if it's an Obama, Trump, Putin or their UK equivalent giving the final "okay" or if the target is a US/UK/Russian national who's a terrorist/pedophile/traitor/whatever. It's about the lack of accountability, the lack of due process, the lack of recourse. All these issues exist regardless of the US, Russia or anybody else doing something like this. In that context, the US drone war is pretty much the overt manifestation of a practice that used to be kept covertly due to its inherent controversy. But in the zeals of a war on terror, where even torture became openly condonable, too many people have lost their moral compass.
      - stickfigure 8y ago
        > The US drone program does not target US citizens who speak up, protest, or embarrass the president of the USA, at the behest of just the president. How do you know that? Well, there's simple occam's razor - if drone strikes were doing this, we'd probably have heard about it. On the other hand we have a rising body count of journalists, artists, and ex-spies with real names and histories. No matter how you feel about drone strikes, you can't compare these things.
- anigbrowl 8y ago
  Really, one kind of assassination is very much like another. I'm not saying that to be edgy; I sometimes wonder if a limited number of obvious assassinations isn't better than an open-ended number of casualties in conventional war (viz/ Syria for example). It's true that drones tend to be military rather than espionage assets, and as insignia-bearing military hardware in a designated battle zone they're legally equivalent to a sniper successfully killing a distant target. However battlefield snipers generally make opportunistic choices based on tactical considerations, with little regard to the identity of their targets. A great many drone attacks begin with intelligence about a specific target and then deploy the resources to eliminate that person, which for me puts it closer to assassination. (This is an idiosyncratic definition and I doubt it lines up with accepted laws of war.)
torpfactory 8y ago
We ought not engage in whataboutism here. Both Russian poising and the US drone program are terrible for different reasons and we ought to demand an end to both.
- fromMars 8y ago
  Can we not differentiate these two, morally? Is killing a civilian who uses words to critique a government not different than killing an enemy who is at war with a government? Maybe drones are terrible way to accomplish the latter (too many civilian collateral damage).
  - torpfactory 8y ago
    Yes, certainly we should discuss them and there is definitely a difference morally. It’s clear extrajudicial killings of political opponents is wrong. Drone strikes are wrong because in a sense they are also extrajudicial. At least, the threshold for lethal force is too low, in my opinion
  - jononor 8y ago
    Every man above 16 tends to be labeled a combatant in the drone programs. No requirement that they have harmed anyone. Sure there are differences, but also similarities.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
ajross 8y ago
No one drops bombs on their domestic political opposition. Russia isn't poisoning it's military enemies, it's poisoning Russians. There really is an important distinction.

YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago

But they only target terrorists.

erentz 8y ago

Your comparison is completely unalike. Yes the US drone war program is bad. Yes the endless war on terror is bad. But these are not the same as a tyrant poisoning anyone who becomes inconvenient to him. The closest comparison I think you could validly make would be something like the harsh treatment of Chelsea Manning or Reality Winner (or Drake, or Snowden, etc). None of which were taken out with poison or a Hellfire missile. (Edit: that’s not to excuse the treatment of those people either.)

freeflight 8y ago
No, it's exactly the same. Both are extrajudicial and state-sponsored killings aka assassinations. Just because many people have blind trust in the US government and the validity of its kill list aka "disposition matrix" [0] doesn't change the basic injustice of the act, which is just as unjust as poisoning some "enemy of the state". The international laws and human rights broken in both cases are exactly the same, the only difference is the methodology of the final "execution". > None of which were taken out with poison or a Hellfire missile. It's extremely naive to assume we know every drone victim ever, it's not like the US drone program is a shining beacon of transparency. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposition_Matrix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposition_Matrix
- erentz 8y ago
  Putin targets Russian citizens that are his personal enemies because they speak up, protest, or otherwise embarrass him. He does it using poison in a manner to make sure everyone knows who did it and what the consequences are if you cross him. The US drone program does not target US citizens who speak up, protest, or embarrass the president of the USA, at the behest of just the president. (Stating the obvious, but that’s not a defense of the drone program. You’ve outlined its problems. But it’s just clearly not the same thing.)
  - freeflight 8y ago
    > The US drone program does not target US citizens who speak up, protest, or embarrass the president of the USA, at the behest of just the president. How do you know that? Does the US publish its list? No, it doesn't, so you are making that statement on literally nothing but good faith. While at the same time you use bad faith to frame the Russian version as something where Putin personally orders people killed for slighting him or some other mundane reason. The reality is both are killing "enemies of the state", justified and regulated by their own, internal, rulesets and governmental institutions. They and others have been doing so openly, and covertly for decades. Heck, this kind of stuff even has been glorified as a pop-culture export from the UK as "the agent with a license to kill". In that context, there's literally no difference if it's an Obama, Trump, Putin or their UK equivalent giving the final "okay" or if the target is a US/UK/Russian national who's a terrorist/pedophile/traitor/whatever. It's about the lack of accountability, the lack of due process, the lack of recourse. All these issues exist regardless of the US, Russia or anybody else doing something like this. In that context, the US drone war is pretty much the overt manifestation of a practice that used to be kept covertly due to its inherent controversy. But in the zeals of a war on terror, where even torture became openly condonable, too many people have lost their moral compass.
    - stickfigure 8y ago
      > The US drone program does not target US citizens who speak up, protest, or embarrass the president of the USA, at the behest of just the president. How do you know that? Well, there's simple occam's razor - if drone strikes were doing this, we'd probably have heard about it. On the other hand we have a rising body count of journalists, artists, and ex-spies with real names and histories. No matter how you feel about drone strikes, you can't compare these things.
anigbrowl 8y ago
Really, one kind of assassination is very much like another. I'm not saying that to be edgy; I sometimes wonder if a limited number of obvious assassinations isn't better than an open-ended number of casualties in conventional war (viz/ Syria for example). It's true that drones tend to be military rather than espionage assets, and as insignia-bearing military hardware in a designated battle zone they're legally equivalent to a sniper successfully killing a distant target. However battlefield snipers generally make opportunistic choices based on tactical considerations, with little regard to the identity of their targets. A great many drone attacks begin with intelligence about a specific target and then deploy the resources to eliminate that person, which for me puts it closer to assassination. (This is an idiosyncratic definition and I doubt it lines up with accepted laws of war.)

torpfactory 8y ago

We ought not engage in whataboutism here. Both Russian poising and the US drone program are terrible for different reasons and we ought to demand an end to both.

fromMars 8y ago
Can we not differentiate these two, morally? Is killing a civilian who uses words to critique a government not different than killing an enemy who is at war with a government? Maybe drones are terrible way to accomplish the latter (too many civilian collateral damage).
- torpfactory 8y ago
  Yes, certainly we should discuss them and there is definitely a difference morally. It’s clear extrajudicial killings of political opponents is wrong. Drone strikes are wrong because in a sense they are also extrajudicial. At least, the threshold for lethal force is too low, in my opinion
- jononor 8y ago
  Every man above 16 tends to be labeled a combatant in the drone programs. No requirement that they have harmed anyone. Sure there are differences, but also similarities.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

ajross 8y ago

No one drops bombs on their domestic political opposition. Russia isn't poisoning it's military enemies, it's poisoning Russians. There really is an important distinction.