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100% agreed with this and this is one of the worst issues about the development of long range weapons. 'We droned this guy.' 'We bombed this area.' 'We destroye

100% agreed with this and this is one of the worst issues about the development of long range weapons. 'We droned this guy.' 'We bombed this area.' 'We destroyed this boat.' All of this really sounds so much better than what it really is. It's murdering people all around the world, many of whom are 100% innocent. For instance the last person we droned in occupied Afghanistan was Zemari Ahmadi - a longtime worker for a US humanitarian aid organization. A US drone operator mistook bottles of water he was loading into his car for his family as bombs, and so they murdered him as well as 10 other civilians, including 7 children, all with the press of a button. [1] [1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/10/world/asia/us-air-strike-drone-kabul-afghanistan-isis.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/10/world/asia/us-air-strike-...

jmb99 1y ago
>many of whom are 100% innocent Under US law, 100% of them are 100% innocent, by definition. "Innocent until proven guilty" and whatnot; it literally means that every person is innocent in the eyes of the law until a court finds them guilty.
- PenguinCoder 1y ago
  Unfortunately that had been forgotten in this era.
- anarticle 1y ago
  Fun fact, if you're not a US citizen on US soil US law does not apply. I'm not saying this because I'm taking a side, but this was how the Patriot act had knock on effects. An interesting case of this is something like you call a foreign national in another country and this is enough to be able to tap both sides of the conversation via Patriot Act / NSA purview.
  - asdefghyk 1y ago
    RE ".....not a US citizen on US soil US law does not apply....." Does not maKE SENSE... Why are people extradited to US from overseas locations . Like why they want Julian Assange ?
    - raspasov 1y ago
      Just some ideas: - Drone-bombing an embassy in downtown London does not look good on social media - He's too famous and has many supporters in the Western world to be publicly assassinated, regardless of location (example: Lady Gaga visited him while he was stuck in the embassy) - He's more useful as a deterrent, i.e., "see what might happen to you", to the people who might decide to go a similar route. Some will go that route regardless, but chances are at least a few have been persuaded otherwise. For all the ridicule of the government, the Intelligence Community seems to be doing a fairly intelligent job most of the time to satisfy its objectives.
    - bulbar 1y ago
      It does not apply in general, but a country will always declare jurisdiction if deemed necessary. A common example in Germany is that the country will try to enforce German law for foreign-hosted websites hosted by citizen of another country if the website is targeted at German citizen.
  - brookst 1y ago
    Are you saying that non-citizen residents of the US are not subject to US laws? That seems dubious.
  - LastTrain 1y ago
    And we know for sure there were no US citizens on these boats?
  - godelski 1y ago
    > not a US citizen ***on US soil*** US law does not apply. 1) these strikes are happening in international waters 2) US law definitely applies to non citizens on US soil. Like that's such a ridiculous statement. Even if the law was "we can do whatever if you're not a citizen", that's still law... You think non citizens are all sovereign citizens bound to no law? To be able to do whatever they want? I didn't know my neighbor was a diplomat. I think you mean rights. Which this is much more dubious. The constitution definitely interchanges the use of "citizens" and "people". Notably the 11th amendment uses citizens, specifying belonging to states foreign or domestic. It was ratified only a few years after the Bill of rights, so not like a drastic language change happened. There are people who will argue "the people" means "citizens" but I find that a difficult interpretation if you read the constitution or federalist papers.
    - nerdsniper 1y ago
      3) quite a few US laws apply to US citizens on non-US soil (paying domestic taxes on foreign income) 4) US law applies to non-US citizens who have never set foot in the USA (Kim Dotcom)
  - mjanx123 1y ago
    A country jurisdiction is both territorial and personal, the laws apply to anyone on the soil, and to the citizens, permanent residents, asylum seekers etc anywhere in the universe.
  - anarticle 1y ago
    Oh sorry, I have the wrong polarity here: "not US citizen" on "not US soil" is what I meant. Sorry for the firestorm this created! What I mean to say is that the USA INTENTIONALLY violates rights of people outside the USA, expressed in things like the Patriot Act re:wiretapping, and also the spaces between passport control where they say "USA laws don't apply, our agents have purview to do essentially anything". If you check the discussions in the 00s about this the fed govt was very dicey and you can tell they were chomping at the bit to be able to have essentially NO OVERSIGHT on any of these massive violations of people's rights. I'll take the karma hit, there is no way to edit it apparently. Sorry!
- breppp 1y ago
  Although the Venezuela example is quite an overreach, none of these people fall under the US laws you think they do The legal basis is them being declared Unlawful Combatants under the Military Commissions Act of 2006. Once they do they are enemy combatants in war and can be killed. This law was so thoroughly used by all presidents since then that you cannot really claim it's illegal
  - bulbar 1y ago
    > Although the Venezuela example is quite an overreach To me it sounds like that killing was (possibly) illegal. Idk about that 2006 Act though. From a moral stand point it doesn't matter if it was (possibly) illegal or not however.
    - Den_VR 1y ago
      It matters quite a lot, it’s the biblical difference between killing and murder.
      - bulbar 1y ago
        Law at biblical times had a different foundation than today. Today the foundation is legal positivism, which is the philosophical decoupling of moral and law (which sounds terrible at first glance, but is important if you think it through). Therefore, it is not useful to apply the definition of the terms from back then, because the whole context in which they were used doesn't exist anymore. In the Western world, the meaning of murder and killing is different and while that described action might be an unlawful killing (by accident) it most likely was not a murder.
  - pstuart 1y ago
    They're not enemy combatants, at worst they're drug runners. Just because Trump declares something to be true doesn't make it true (although his lackeys will act as if it is). This is not how to deal with The Drug War™, it's very expensive theater that does nothing to address the problem. In fact that very war is the reason why it's a problem in the first place. Remember that an earlier batch of dangerous drug dealers were Americans working out of doctors' offices.
- bawolff 1y ago
  Its kind of irrelavent in an armed conflict. There are a bunch of rules (i.e. the geneva conventions) around who can and cannot be targeted in an armed conflict, but innocent vs guilty is not how it works. Innocent people being killed can sometimes totally be consistent with the rules of war. Guilty people being killed can sometimes be a violation of the rules. Innocent vs guiltly is the wrong metaphor for what makes a legal target.
  - lostlogin 1y ago
    > Innocent people being killed can sometimes totally be consistent with the rules of war. The US attacks people and countries without declaring war. If anyone did this to the US, can you imagine the butt-hurt response?
    - theoreticalmal 1y ago
      The majority of the West has implicitly or explicitly ceded their national defense and warfighting capabilities to the USA. The comparison between USA and “other countries” isn’t really valid, as the situations are vastly different
      - jampekka 1y ago
        What does that mean? That USA is somehow killing people all around the world as a puppet or Iceland or something?
      - lostlogin 1y ago
        US exceptionalism doesn’t make killing ok.
      - AlecSchueler 1y ago
        The West isn't the world, though. China could start taking out random boats next week.
    - bawolff 1y ago
      > The US attacks people and countries without declaring war. Declaring a war stopped being a thing after world war 2. Not just for usa but for everyone. In modern times a decleration of war has no meaning in international law. It only has meaning in domestic law. I think the reason is that the UN charter makes it illegal to fight a war except in self-defense. In modern times declerations of war have generally been replaced with sending a notice to the un security council that you intend to use your right to self defense. I dont know about this particular situation but i think a lot of the time historically the US has followed that procedure.
owlbite 1y ago
But it can be even worse than that. It's "we assassinated the phone", "algorithm says vehicle has suspicious travel history and must die". There's no real thinking human in the loop for some of this stuff, just some model decided the metadata has a high probability of being associate with an opponent of some flavor and then everyone in the vicinity is blown to bits as computer said kill.
mmooss 1y ago
> this is one of the worst issues about the development of long range weapons. 'We droned this guy.' 'We bombed this area.' 'We destroyed this boat.' The US administration uses the long range to argue that the War Powers Act doesn't apply: They aruge that the Act applies to 'hostilities', and US soldiers are too far from the targets to be exposed to danger, therefore they aren't 'hostilities'.
- lupire 1y ago
  And that reasoning was plagiarized from Obama's justification for operations in Libya.
  - mmooss 1y ago
    Was it? And so what?
hpdigidrifter 1y ago
>100% innocent Feel free to explain the submarine with no flag they bombed
- vincnetas 1y ago
  i have not seen any submarines with flags though.
  - dmoy 1y ago
    I think GP means flag as in flag state - ocean vessels are typically to some country. In this sense, nearly all submarines are flagged - US navy, Russian navy, whatever. Not as in a literal flag flying on the submarine. (Though they do fly flags near ports and such)
    - AngryData 1y ago
      Their is an entire DIY submarine community around the Caribbean and those guys aren't part of any navy or military and don't fly flags.
- c45y 1y ago
  Innocent until the courts say otherwise. It's why we apprehend people for crimes instead of just shooting them (in most countries)
- metabagel 1y ago
  Likely, a narco-sub, but still should intercept and board rather than summary execution.

jmb99 1y ago

>many of whom are 100% innocent Under US law, 100% of them are 100% innocent, by definition. "Innocent until proven guilty" and whatnot; it literally means that every person is innocent in the eyes of the law until a court finds them guilty.

PenguinCoder 1y ago
Unfortunately that had been forgotten in this era.
anarticle 1y ago
Fun fact, if you're not a US citizen on US soil US law does not apply. I'm not saying this because I'm taking a side, but this was how the Patriot act had knock on effects. An interesting case of this is something like you call a foreign national in another country and this is enough to be able to tap both sides of the conversation via Patriot Act / NSA purview.
- asdefghyk 1y ago
  RE ".....not a US citizen on US soil US law does not apply....." Does not maKE SENSE... Why are people extradited to US from overseas locations . Like why they want Julian Assange ?
  - raspasov 1y ago
    Just some ideas: - Drone-bombing an embassy in downtown London does not look good on social media - He's too famous and has many supporters in the Western world to be publicly assassinated, regardless of location (example: Lady Gaga visited him while he was stuck in the embassy) - He's more useful as a deterrent, i.e., "see what might happen to you", to the people who might decide to go a similar route. Some will go that route regardless, but chances are at least a few have been persuaded otherwise. For all the ridicule of the government, the Intelligence Community seems to be doing a fairly intelligent job most of the time to satisfy its objectives.
  - bulbar 1y ago
    It does not apply in general, but a country will always declare jurisdiction if deemed necessary. A common example in Germany is that the country will try to enforce German law for foreign-hosted websites hosted by citizen of another country if the website is targeted at German citizen.
- brookst 1y ago
  Are you saying that non-citizen residents of the US are not subject to US laws? That seems dubious.
- LastTrain 1y ago
  And we know for sure there were no US citizens on these boats?
- godelski 1y ago
  > not a US citizen ***on US soil*** US law does not apply. 1) these strikes are happening in international waters 2) US law definitely applies to non citizens on US soil. Like that's such a ridiculous statement. Even if the law was "we can do whatever if you're not a citizen", that's still law... You think non citizens are all sovereign citizens bound to no law? To be able to do whatever they want? I didn't know my neighbor was a diplomat. I think you mean rights. Which this is much more dubious. The constitution definitely interchanges the use of "citizens" and "people". Notably the 11th amendment uses citizens, specifying belonging to states foreign or domestic. It was ratified only a few years after the Bill of rights, so not like a drastic language change happened. There are people who will argue "the people" means "citizens" but I find that a difficult interpretation if you read the constitution or federalist papers.
  - nerdsniper 1y ago
    3) quite a few US laws apply to US citizens on non-US soil (paying domestic taxes on foreign income) 4) US law applies to non-US citizens who have never set foot in the USA (Kim Dotcom)
- mjanx123 1y ago
  A country jurisdiction is both territorial and personal, the laws apply to anyone on the soil, and to the citizens, permanent residents, asylum seekers etc anywhere in the universe.
- anarticle 1y ago
  Oh sorry, I have the wrong polarity here: "not US citizen" on "not US soil" is what I meant. Sorry for the firestorm this created! What I mean to say is that the USA INTENTIONALLY violates rights of people outside the USA, expressed in things like the Patriot Act re:wiretapping, and also the spaces between passport control where they say "USA laws don't apply, our agents have purview to do essentially anything". If you check the discussions in the 00s about this the fed govt was very dicey and you can tell they were chomping at the bit to be able to have essentially NO OVERSIGHT on any of these massive violations of people's rights. I'll take the karma hit, there is no way to edit it apparently. Sorry!
breppp 1y ago
Although the Venezuela example is quite an overreach, none of these people fall under the US laws you think they do The legal basis is them being declared Unlawful Combatants under the Military Commissions Act of 2006. Once they do they are enemy combatants in war and can be killed. This law was so thoroughly used by all presidents since then that you cannot really claim it's illegal
- bulbar 1y ago
  > Although the Venezuela example is quite an overreach To me it sounds like that killing was (possibly) illegal. Idk about that 2006 Act though. From a moral stand point it doesn't matter if it was (possibly) illegal or not however.
  - Den_VR 1y ago
    It matters quite a lot, it’s the biblical difference between killing and murder.
    - bulbar 1y ago
      Law at biblical times had a different foundation than today. Today the foundation is legal positivism, which is the philosophical decoupling of moral and law (which sounds terrible at first glance, but is important if you think it through). Therefore, it is not useful to apply the definition of the terms from back then, because the whole context in which they were used doesn't exist anymore. In the Western world, the meaning of murder and killing is different and while that described action might be an unlawful killing (by accident) it most likely was not a murder.
- pstuart 1y ago
  They're not enemy combatants, at worst they're drug runners. Just because Trump declares something to be true doesn't make it true (although his lackeys will act as if it is). This is not how to deal with The Drug War™, it's very expensive theater that does nothing to address the problem. In fact that very war is the reason why it's a problem in the first place. Remember that an earlier batch of dangerous drug dealers were Americans working out of doctors' offices.
bawolff 1y ago
Its kind of irrelavent in an armed conflict. There are a bunch of rules (i.e. the geneva conventions) around who can and cannot be targeted in an armed conflict, but innocent vs guilty is not how it works. Innocent people being killed can sometimes totally be consistent with the rules of war. Guilty people being killed can sometimes be a violation of the rules. Innocent vs guiltly is the wrong metaphor for what makes a legal target.
- lostlogin 1y ago
  > Innocent people being killed can sometimes totally be consistent with the rules of war. The US attacks people and countries without declaring war. If anyone did this to the US, can you imagine the butt-hurt response?
  - theoreticalmal 1y ago
    The majority of the West has implicitly or explicitly ceded their national defense and warfighting capabilities to the USA. The comparison between USA and “other countries” isn’t really valid, as the situations are vastly different
    - jampekka 1y ago
      What does that mean? That USA is somehow killing people all around the world as a puppet or Iceland or something?
    - lostlogin 1y ago
      US exceptionalism doesn’t make killing ok.
    - AlecSchueler 1y ago
      The West isn't the world, though. China could start taking out random boats next week.
  - bawolff 1y ago
    > The US attacks people and countries without declaring war. Declaring a war stopped being a thing after world war 2. Not just for usa but for everyone. In modern times a decleration of war has no meaning in international law. It only has meaning in domestic law. I think the reason is that the UN charter makes it illegal to fight a war except in self-defense. In modern times declerations of war have generally been replaced with sending a notice to the un security council that you intend to use your right to self defense. I dont know about this particular situation but i think a lot of the time historically the US has followed that procedure.

owlbite 1y ago

But it can be even worse than that. It's "we assassinated the phone", "algorithm says vehicle has suspicious travel history and must die". There's no real thinking human in the loop for some of this stuff, just some model decided the metadata has a high probability of being associate with an opponent of some flavor and then everyone in the vicinity is blown to bits as computer said kill.

mmooss 1y ago

> this is one of the worst issues about the development of long range weapons. 'We droned this guy.' 'We bombed this area.' 'We destroyed this boat.' The US administration uses the long range to argue that the War Powers Act doesn't apply: They aruge that the Act applies to 'hostilities', and US soldiers are too far from the targets to be exposed to danger, therefore they aren't 'hostilities'.

lupire 1y ago
And that reasoning was plagiarized from Obama's justification for operations in Libya.
- mmooss 1y ago
  Was it? And so what?

hpdigidrifter 1y ago

>100% innocent Feel free to explain the submarine with no flag they bombed

vincnetas 1y ago
i have not seen any submarines with flags though.
- dmoy 1y ago
  I think GP means flag as in flag state - ocean vessels are typically to some country. In this sense, nearly all submarines are flagged - US navy, Russian navy, whatever. Not as in a literal flag flying on the submarine. (Though they do fly flags near ports and such)
  - AngryData 1y ago
    Their is an entire DIY submarine community around the Caribbean and those guys aren't part of any navy or military and don't fly flags.
c45y 1y ago
Innocent until the courts say otherwise. It's why we apprehend people for crimes instead of just shooting them (in most countries)
metabagel 1y ago
Likely, a narco-sub, but still should intercept and board rather than summary execution.