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"It can be a slippery slope". (A) Killing your own citizens with (B) secret laws / justifications using (C) zero / secret "evidence" and (D) No oversight by a

"It can be a slippery slope". (A) Killing your own citizens with (B) secret laws / justifications using (C) zero / secret "evidence" and (D) No oversight by a group outside of those who are ordering the killings can be a slippery slope? That is not the slippery slope, that is the ditch at the bottom once you have slid all the way down.

jfoster 13y ago
If those people were plotting to kill hundreds/thousands of your more innocent citizens, then you could do a lot worse. The problem is where you draw the line.
- rurounijones 13y ago
  In legal terms (and I use that loosely) they have already decided that they have that right, so in that sense we have already reached the bottom. Now, implementation wise you are correct in that things could be worse. However in the "We are the government and we can do this" sense...ditch. (It must be said that the nice thing about the large-scale implementation problem is that the US population would rise up against that, but that is small comfort for the victims in the "small enough that 'Joe Average' doesn't care about it" death-list.)
- grey-area 13y ago
  If those people were plotting to kill hundreds/thousands of your more innocent citizens And if they weren't?
  - jasonlotito 13y ago
    I don't know of any case where they specifically targeted people they thought were innocent. Can you provide anything to support that claim?
    - pantaril 13y ago
      From http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/18/opinion/the-drone-that-killed-my-grandson.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/18/opinion/the-drone-that-kil... : "The missile killed him, his teenage cousin and at least five other civilians on Oct. 14, 2011, while the boys were eating dinner at an open-air restaurant in southern Yemen...The attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., said only that Abdulrahman was not “specifically targeted,” raising more questions than he answered." I don't know if it is common for u.s. army to kill people without targeting them but if it is the case they should better learn how to aim.
    - grey-area 13y ago
      Almost every drone strike kills several people - usually only one of those people is the intended target. In many cases (including the one linked) they have admitted that the people killed were not the target. Not as an apology (those are rare, they don't feel the need to admit mistakes because of course the missions and targets are secret), but simply to say that those people were not the intended target, just collateral damage. Here's another well-known example of firing on a crowd: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/jul/03/afghanistan.lukeharding http://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/jul/03/afghanistan.luk... By the time you're firing missiles at a restaurant, you have accepted that as long as your target is killed, some innocents will die with them. Any civilians, waiters, passers by etc who are caught in the blast are clearly just the cost of doing business. The attacks don't happen in a war zone or under cover of war, except the eternal and ill-specified 'war on terror'. If you want to argue that is not specifically targeting innocent people I'd respond that they are indiscriminately targeting innocent people in the hope of hitting their targets, which is worse. It's remarkable to me that people still try to defend these attacks - if missiles were used on targets in a town on the US, killing several bystanders, there would be outrage, and rightly so. For the civilians on the ground, it is equivalent to suicide bombers taking out a crowd, some of whom are off-duty troops - the two acts have very similar consequences.
  - jfoster 13y ago
    Yeah, that's one of the problems. You'd hope the agencies involved are only taking these actions where they have extreme certainty. And even if they do have that super-high certainty, it still is an execution without a trial, which makes a lot of people uneasy. Utmost transparency (probably has to be after-the-fact) into each case where this is done might help to put some people a little bit more at-ease about it. In cases where they get it wrong due to negligence, you might hope to see prosecutions as a result of the transparency. It feels like this is one of those polarizing issues where each side is too scared to admit advantages of a different point of view in case they lose some ground. Everyone takes an extreme view for/against, the debate doesn't address the finer points of reality, and no one changes their mind or comes to more reasonable compromises.
    - vdaniuk 13y ago
      Your argument to moderation is one of the classical fallacies. Maybe there are no reasonable compromises and one of the extreme views is correct.
      - jfoster 13y ago
        Well, assuming there is a "correct" view. I can't see what it would be. Nothing will be perfect. My primary point is that the merits of each approach should be acknowledged. Anyone who claims that all of the merits are at one extreme is deliberately lying or blinded by their extremism.
    - grey-area 13y ago
      Yeah, that's one of the problems. You'd hope the agencies involved are only taking these actions where they have extreme certainty. The problem with this is that it requires us to trust our intelligence agencies, but they have shown themselves to be duplicitous, quite willing to lie to congress under oath, and unworthy of trust. Even by their own admission they have not been taking these actions when they have extreme certainty - people are killed who are "not specifically targeted". There is no way to make assassination without trial by the executive transparent and accountable - that's why we have a court system and independent judiciary, and a whole host of laws protecting the accused. Subverting that entire legal system is very dangerous and we shouldn't allow it, because if we do, there is no legal impediment to stop laws used for terrorists being turned against others who oppose the state.
- foqiwjoqafi 13y ago
  who's going to draw the line for the USA? This shit is 100000% hypocrite, what the FUCK would happen if any other country had killed so many innocents as the US do all the fucking time with it's stupid hypocrite bullshit everywhere? Nothing fucking happens, just look at the data of how many innocent people including children drone strikes have taken. Why doesn't this have any weight in anything? Oh, I know, all the flashlight is always just pointed at any nutter in your country that managed to get a 3 to 5 bodycount or wathever and spin the shit out of this mess as to justify what you do. No wonder there's people plotting against you.

jfoster 13y ago

If those people were plotting to kill hundreds/thousands of your more innocent citizens, then you could do a lot worse. The problem is where you draw the line.

rurounijones 13y ago
In legal terms (and I use that loosely) they have already decided that they have that right, so in that sense we have already reached the bottom. Now, implementation wise you are correct in that things could be worse. However in the "We are the government and we can do this" sense...ditch. (It must be said that the nice thing about the large-scale implementation problem is that the US population would rise up against that, but that is small comfort for the victims in the "small enough that 'Joe Average' doesn't care about it" death-list.)
grey-area 13y ago
If those people were plotting to kill hundreds/thousands of your more innocent citizens And if they weren't?
- jasonlotito 13y ago
  I don't know of any case where they specifically targeted people they thought were innocent. Can you provide anything to support that claim?
  - pantaril 13y ago
    From http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/18/opinion/the-drone-that-killed-my-grandson.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/18/opinion/the-drone-that-kil... : "The missile killed him, his teenage cousin and at least five other civilians on Oct. 14, 2011, while the boys were eating dinner at an open-air restaurant in southern Yemen...The attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., said only that Abdulrahman was not “specifically targeted,” raising more questions than he answered." I don't know if it is common for u.s. army to kill people without targeting them but if it is the case they should better learn how to aim.
  - grey-area 13y ago
    Almost every drone strike kills several people - usually only one of those people is the intended target. In many cases (including the one linked) they have admitted that the people killed were not the target. Not as an apology (those are rare, they don't feel the need to admit mistakes because of course the missions and targets are secret), but simply to say that those people were not the intended target, just collateral damage. Here's another well-known example of firing on a crowd: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/jul/03/afghanistan.lukeharding http://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/jul/03/afghanistan.luk... By the time you're firing missiles at a restaurant, you have accepted that as long as your target is killed, some innocents will die with them. Any civilians, waiters, passers by etc who are caught in the blast are clearly just the cost of doing business. The attacks don't happen in a war zone or under cover of war, except the eternal and ill-specified 'war on terror'. If you want to argue that is not specifically targeting innocent people I'd respond that they are indiscriminately targeting innocent people in the hope of hitting their targets, which is worse. It's remarkable to me that people still try to defend these attacks - if missiles were used on targets in a town on the US, killing several bystanders, there would be outrage, and rightly so. For the civilians on the ground, it is equivalent to suicide bombers taking out a crowd, some of whom are off-duty troops - the two acts have very similar consequences.
- jfoster 13y ago
  Yeah, that's one of the problems. You'd hope the agencies involved are only taking these actions where they have extreme certainty. And even if they do have that super-high certainty, it still is an execution without a trial, which makes a lot of people uneasy. Utmost transparency (probably has to be after-the-fact) into each case where this is done might help to put some people a little bit more at-ease about it. In cases where they get it wrong due to negligence, you might hope to see prosecutions as a result of the transparency. It feels like this is one of those polarizing issues where each side is too scared to admit advantages of a different point of view in case they lose some ground. Everyone takes an extreme view for/against, the debate doesn't address the finer points of reality, and no one changes their mind or comes to more reasonable compromises.
  - vdaniuk 13y ago
    Your argument to moderation is one of the classical fallacies. Maybe there are no reasonable compromises and one of the extreme views is correct.
    - jfoster 13y ago
      Well, assuming there is a "correct" view. I can't see what it would be. Nothing will be perfect. My primary point is that the merits of each approach should be acknowledged. Anyone who claims that all of the merits are at one extreme is deliberately lying or blinded by their extremism.
  - grey-area 13y ago
    Yeah, that's one of the problems. You'd hope the agencies involved are only taking these actions where they have extreme certainty. The problem with this is that it requires us to trust our intelligence agencies, but they have shown themselves to be duplicitous, quite willing to lie to congress under oath, and unworthy of trust. Even by their own admission they have not been taking these actions when they have extreme certainty - people are killed who are "not specifically targeted". There is no way to make assassination without trial by the executive transparent and accountable - that's why we have a court system and independent judiciary, and a whole host of laws protecting the accused. Subverting that entire legal system is very dangerous and we shouldn't allow it, because if we do, there is no legal impediment to stop laws used for terrorists being turned against others who oppose the state.
foqiwjoqafi 13y ago
who's going to draw the line for the USA? This shit is 100000% hypocrite, what the FUCK would happen if any other country had killed so many innocents as the US do all the fucking time with it's stupid hypocrite bullshit everywhere? Nothing fucking happens, just look at the data of how many innocent people including children drone strikes have taken. Why doesn't this have any weight in anything? Oh, I know, all the flashlight is always just pointed at any nutter in your country that managed to get a 3 to 5 bodycount or wathever and spin the shit out of this mess as to justify what you do. No wonder there's people plotting against you.