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Uncertainty is (unfortunately) everywhere; for example, what probability is “beyond a reasonable doubt”? There are many who take issue with that question, but t
by nickff 4y ago
Uncertainty is (unfortunately) everywhere; for example, what probability is “beyond a reasonable doubt”? There are many who take issue with that question, but the answers I’ve seen range between 0.1% and 5%, with no general consensus.
- forgetfulness 4y agoWhat's the appeal process for being assassinated by the CIA like?
- darawk 4y agoPretty similar to the appeals process for being killed by the terrorist that the CIA chose not to assassinate.
- ivalm 4y agoHow many Americans died from terrorism? How many foreigners died from anti-terrorism drone strikes?
- devNoise 4y agoThe other question is how many terrorist did we create from drone strikes?
- darawk 4y agoThese are actually easy things to look up. 910-2,200 civilians killed by drone strikes[1]. More than that were killed on 9/11 alone [2]. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualties_from_U.S._drone_strikes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualties_from_U.S._... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks
- idontpost 4y ago
- dwater 4y agoAnd if you exclude the black swan event of 9/11 which the US was unprepared for, the numbers get a lot smaller, e.g.: "According to the GTD, 80 Americans were killed in terrorist attacks from 2004 to 2013, including perpetrators and excluding deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq, the majority of which are combat-related. Of those 80 Americans killed, 36 were killed in attacks that occurred in the United States." https://www.start.umd.edu/pubs/START_AmericanTerrorismDeaths_FactSheet_Oct2015.pdf https://www.start.umd.edu/pubs/START_AmericanTerrorismDeaths...
- darawk 4y agoWhy would we exclude the largest terrorist attack in American history, the thing that the interventions in question were explicitly designed to prevent a recurrence of? And anyway, if you want to get into that question, then we'd have to start including the civilian deaths caused by ISIS, and that's going to make the balance even more favorable to drone strikes. There's no reason to limit the analysis to Americans, either. Dismantling Al Qaeda, ISIS and other terrorist networks contributed to the reduction in terrorist violence against many groups, not just Americans. Probably not even primarily Americans. Not to mention the rather obvious fact that the interventions in question were designed to reduce terrorism, and so their efficacy can only be truly benchmarked against the counterfactual world in which they were not implemented. However, conveniently, the balance is still overwhelmingly favorable even in the actual world that we happen to inhabit.
- InitialLastName 4y agoI know we're talking about drone strikes, but we should always and forever note that the civilian casualties from the US' war on terror far outweighs [0] those who died from terrorism. Not to mention the US troops who died to make Iraqi oil available to US businesses, or who continue to die by suicide and social deaths related to their experiences in the war [1]. [0] https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/figures/2021/WarDeathToll https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/figures/2021/WarDeathTol... [1] https://www.npr.org/2021/06/24/1009846329/military-suicides-deaths-mental-health-crisis https://www.npr.org/2021/06/24/1009846329/military-suicides-...
- Banana699 4y agoWe should exterminate the entirety of humanity then, this is the only sure way to decrease terrorism to exactly 0. Although when you think about it, those single-celled bacteria look awefully suspicious and up to nothing good.
- littlestymaar 4y agoSo for you the CIA has the same moral requirements than terrorists groups? That line of reasoning ends up to the conclusion that CIA's assassination is just state sponsored terrorism, and I'm not sure that's the argument you are willing to make.
- darawk 4y agoI didn't say that, nor did I bring up the casualties comparison. The person I was responding to asked what the relative casualty counts were.
- nickff 4y agoAbout the same as that for being killed on a battlefield, and not much worse than that available to an indigent defendant.
- wombatpm 4y agoSimilar to gmail and youtube suspension process. It happens to you, you or someone makes your case on social media, someone in google may listen and modify the policy rules.
- raxxorraxor 4y agoThe CIA will torture any witnesses of you having had any life and then denies that you ever existed.
- raxxorraxor 4y agoBut there are also people that acknowledge the existence of uncertainty and draw conclusions from that. Countries without a death penalty for example. Uncertainty being a fact is not a free ticket.