3 ms·

I "love" how your only options are between completely ignoring them, or killing them right on the spot. Or sending the NYPD in... yeah, that's a stupid idea, wh

I "love" how your only options are between completely ignoring them, or killing them right on the spot. Or sending the NYPD in... yeah, that's a stupid idea, which is probably why you, and you only, brought it up. [1] If they're planning to attack the US, and you already know who and where they are, how about simply tracking them until they hop on a plane, and then arrest them, and give them a trial based on your evidence? It's not like they can magically do damage by giving the US the stinky eye from half across the globe. If Pakistani terrorists executed so much as a single attack on US soil, you better believe the headlines would read: "Politicians knew of terrorist threat, failed to act." On the other hand, if you murder as much as one person without a trial and a good reason, you're a nation with a slight, but unmissable scent. Unless you only care about headlines, or that "others do it too", you should care about this... and by that I don't mean "wait for your politicians to care", because that won't happen until you make them. Technically this violates Pakistan's sovereignty, but who cares? Uhmmm... yeah, who indeed... non-Nazis maybe?! Obama was your chance to get back from that crap, and he made it worse. If the US citizens can't keep its government in check, by your own logic: who cares about collateral damage? The only non-risky way for anyone to attack the US would be to poison all the water of everyone, for example. Would that make it okay? I mean, you can't get at Random Pakistani Terrorist Who Talked Shit About The US without murdering a bunch of kids with robots, well.. the rest of the world can't get at your Pentagon without killing a whole lot of Americans, kinda like killing Iraqis to dethrone Saddam. Fair enough? You see, that's kind of Nazi logic and leads to nowhere good, and that's much easier to notice when the shoe is on the other foot. remember that the US government's responsibilities are towards US citizens Bullshit. It's also responsible for not violating human rights. This may be hard to understand, but it has the responsibility towards its own citizens to not do certain things to ANYONE. terrorism (which has killed far more innocent Pakistanis than drones [2]) Yeah, terrorism done in Pakistan to Pakistanis. As in, not the kind of terrorism you are using as argument, which would be the kind directed at the US. Or did I miss something and the drones are actually there to help out the Pakistanis against their terrorists? Huh! [1] edit: I didn't mean to imply you're stupid, but simply that the whole point of making a strawman is to make it really weak, e.g. make it something stupid that can be knocked over easily.

bloaf 13y ago
>Tracking them until they hop on a plane That sort of approach gets tried from time to time (e.g. the ATF's "Fast and Furious" program) but it has problems of its own. What if they never get on a plane? There are US facilities they could bomb without ever going airborne. What if you lose sight of them? The political risks are nearly the same as ignoring the problem. If they were able to kill US citizens, the headlines would invariably read "Government had killer terrorists in sights, didn't pull trigger." >International pressure Sure, the US has to weigh the impact of its strikes on global opinion. That's a big reason why we care about collateral damage at all. You bring up trials, but still haven't provided a reliable avenue for terrorists to be arrested. >Might makes right You're not doing a very good job of looking at this from a Pakistani perspective. As a Pakistani, my life would be threatened by drone strikes and Pakistani terrorists. You seem to think that it should somehow be my right to try and attack the US government to stop the drone strikes. That is childish reasoning, military conflict is not some sporting event where the rules try to create a level playing field. The US has the means to target terrorists, but I would lack the means to target the US drone program. I could try, but any damage I could do to the US would inherently be indiscriminate. At best, I would end up killing some innocent Americans and their government hunts me down, at worst I just get my family killed in a drone strike. What are my other options? The most obvious one is to personally organize my friends and try to root out the terrorists that live near me. Then there will be no terrorists to bomb me, and the US will have no reason to send in drone strikes. Remember, the only reason that the US is resorting to military action is because there is no organization within Pakistan that can be counted on to eliminate the terrorist threat. >Human rights Prove the civilian deaths were malicious and not simply collateral damage. I don't think anyone can. If it were possible to demonstrate that a specific drone strike deliberately targeted civilians, I have no reason to doubt that the person behind that particular strike would be held accountable. There is also the issue of terrorists using human shields. If terrorists knew that the US was averse to any collateral damage, they would immediately become nearly invincible by strapping babies to their chests or otherwise surrounding themselves with innocent people. >Pakistani v. Pakistani violence. I didn't know terrorist organizations had to choose between domestic or international terrorism when they write up their charter.

bloaf 13y ago

>Tracking them until they hop on a plane That sort of approach gets tried from time to time (e.g. the ATF's "Fast and Furious" program) but it has problems of its own. What if they never get on a plane? There are US facilities they could bomb without ever going airborne. What if you lose sight of them? The political risks are nearly the same as ignoring the problem. If they were able to kill US citizens, the headlines would invariably read "Government had killer terrorists in sights, didn't pull trigger." >International pressure Sure, the US has to weigh the impact of its strikes on global opinion. That's a big reason why we care about collateral damage at all. You bring up trials, but still haven't provided a reliable avenue for terrorists to be arrested. >Might makes right You're not doing a very good job of looking at this from a Pakistani perspective. As a Pakistani, my life would be threatened by drone strikes and Pakistani terrorists. You seem to think that it should somehow be my right to try and attack the US government to stop the drone strikes. That is childish reasoning, military conflict is not some sporting event where the rules try to create a level playing field. The US has the means to target terrorists, but I would lack the means to target the US drone program. I could try, but any damage I could do to the US would inherently be indiscriminate. At best, I would end up killing some innocent Americans and their government hunts me down, at worst I just get my family killed in a drone strike. What are my other options? The most obvious one is to personally organize my friends and try to root out the terrorists that live near me. Then there will be no terrorists to bomb me, and the US will have no reason to send in drone strikes. Remember, the only reason that the US is resorting to military action is because there is no organization within Pakistan that can be counted on to eliminate the terrorist threat. >Human rights Prove the civilian deaths were malicious and not simply collateral damage. I don't think anyone can. If it were possible to demonstrate that a specific drone strike deliberately targeted civilians, I have no reason to doubt that the person behind that particular strike would be held accountable. There is also the issue of terrorists using human shields. If terrorists knew that the US was averse to any collateral damage, they would immediately become nearly invincible by strapping babies to their chests or otherwise surrounding themselves with innocent people. >Pakistani v. Pakistani violence. I didn't know terrorist organizations had to choose between domestic or international terrorism when they write up their charter.