4 ms·

If the person blowing them up takes out the entire city block that happens to include my family, then the person blowing them up is also my enemy. Your family

If the person blowing them up takes out the entire city block that happens to include my family, then the person blowing them up is also my enemy. Your family dies as collateral damage and your reaction is "enh, they did what was necessary"? What if your wedding is blown up by drone strike because of some analyst's mistake, or choice to err on the side of "probably terrorist"?

dzhiurgis 2y ago
> some analyst's mistake You are seriously downplaying how such decisions are made.
- fatbird 2y ago
  I'm sure there's more checks and verifications and signoffs than just "Bob says go!" I'm also sure that such processes are still very fallible [0], as demonstrated by any number of friendly fire incidents over the last few decades [1], or the London Metro Police shooting a Brazilian electrician on the train [2], or the IDF shooting three Israeli hostages trying to surrender [3]. Some mistakes, some bad decisions, some practices allowed that hadn't gone wrong until now... if my innocent family is dead because of that, I'm definitely not going to excuse them because someone else started the fight. And my willingness to allow for accidents in the fog of war is going to shrink every time such accidents are repeated, or revealed to be policy rather than mistake, or just an unwillingness to do anything to avoid them. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_bombing_of_the_Chinese_embassy_in_Belgrade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_bombing_of_the_C... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarnak_Farm_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarnak_Farm_incident [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Jean_Charles_de_Menezes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Jean_Charles_de_Me... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Alon_Shamriz,_Yotam_Haim,_and_Samer_Talalka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Alon_Shamriz,_Yotam... [edit: fix formatting and correcting info]

dzhiurgis 2y ago

> some analyst's mistake You are seriously downplaying how such decisions are made.

fatbird 2y ago
I'm sure there's more checks and verifications and signoffs than just "Bob says go!" I'm also sure that such processes are still very fallible [0], as demonstrated by any number of friendly fire incidents over the last few decades [1], or the London Metro Police shooting a Brazilian electrician on the train [2], or the IDF shooting three Israeli hostages trying to surrender [3]. Some mistakes, some bad decisions, some practices allowed that hadn't gone wrong until now... if my innocent family is dead because of that, I'm definitely not going to excuse them because someone else started the fight. And my willingness to allow for accidents in the fog of war is going to shrink every time such accidents are repeated, or revealed to be policy rather than mistake, or just an unwillingness to do anything to avoid them. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_bombing_of_the_Chinese_embassy_in_Belgrade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_bombing_of_the_C... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarnak_Farm_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarnak_Farm_incident [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Jean_Charles_de_Menezes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Jean_Charles_de_Me... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Alon_Shamriz,_Yotam_Haim,_and_Samer_Talalka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Alon_Shamriz,_Yotam... [edit: fix formatting and correcting info]