4 ms·

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 poisoni

by 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.
    - tim333 8y ago
      We do have quite a lot of info on who are "US citizens who speak up, protest, or embarrass the president of the USA" and who get killed by drones. They don't overlap much. You don't get Drones trying to take out Mueller and the Taliban types who get hit are much more like military/terrorist enemies than political foes.
  - jononor 8y ago
    Here is a US citizen and journalist that is on the kill list. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/how-to-survive-americas-kill-list-699334/ https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/how-... He has been lucky to survive so far. But he is struggling to even get a case before the courts to learn why he is on the list.
    - dogma1138 8y ago
      There is no proof that he is on any kill list what so ever other than his claims of being too close to too many drone strikes which given what he does isn’t that surprising.
      - jononor 8y ago
        If he is not on a kill list, the US government should say so. If they don't want to give out person specific information, they can give a categorical statement like 'no US citizens on a kill list' or 'no US citizens in Syria'. How do you get evidence that you are on a kill list anyway? The lists are top secret, maintained by world class intelligence agencies...
        dogma1138 8y ago
        The US has killed US citizens before e.g. Anwar al-Awlaki; if he’s on the list then it’s not because he is a journalist if he is nothing more than that then he ain’t on any list. There is no reason for the US to publicly state if he is on any kill list or not technically.
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.)

by erentz 8y ago

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.
  - tim333 8y ago
    We do have quite a lot of info on who are "US citizens who speak up, protest, or embarrass the president of the USA" and who get killed by drones. They don't overlap much. You don't get Drones trying to take out Mueller and the Taliban types who get hit are much more like military/terrorist enemies than political foes.
- jononor 8y ago
  Here is a US citizen and journalist that is on the kill list. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/how-to-survive-americas-kill-list-699334/ https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/how-... He has been lucky to survive so far. But he is struggling to even get a case before the courts to learn why he is on the list.
  - dogma1138 8y ago
    There is no proof that he is on any kill list what so ever other than his claims of being too close to too many drone strikes which given what he does isn’t that surprising.
    - jononor 8y ago
      If he is not on a kill list, the US government should say so. If they don't want to give out person specific information, they can give a categorical statement like 'no US citizens on a kill list' or 'no US citizens in Syria'. How do you get evidence that you are on a kill list anyway? The lists are top secret, maintained by world class intelligence agencies...
      - dogma1138 8y ago
        The US has killed US citizens before e.g. Anwar al-Awlaki; if he’s on the list then it’s not because he is a journalist if he is nothing more than that then he ain’t on any list. There is no reason for the US to publicly state if he is on any kill list or not technically.

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.)