13 ms·

The way America is conducting the war on terror is both self-defeating and morally repugnant.

bluedino 13y ago
It's very easy to not agree with the way the US government handles these sort of things, but you have to give them the benefit of the doubt that they are not doing this for shits and giggles. It might seem nationalistic to some but it reminds me of a quote from "A Few Good Men" - Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinburg? I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago, and you curse the Marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. That Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives.
- throwaway2048 13y ago
  saves whose lives, and why should a few of "our side" be more valuable than many of the "bad guys" (which happen to include entire families including innocent women and children)? It should be noted as well that the entire premise of the film wasn't "the ends justify the means" but rather the exact opposite. People can do great evil while believing that every action they take is fundamentally correct and for some kind of nebulous greater good.
  - dkersten 13y ago
    Unrelated, but I really hate the phrase "innocent women and children". What about the innocent men? Or the non-innocent women?
- lbebber 13y ago
  Eh, saves lives inside, disregards lives outside. I know it's a complicated matter, but that reasoning can't be used to justify atrocities such as this one.
- pavlov 13y ago
  It's very easy to not agree with the way the North Korean government handles many things, but you have to give them the benefit of the doubt that they are not doing it for shits and giggles. After all, they have been at war for over 60 years now. It must be obvious to any patriotic Korean that the danger posed by American imperialists who still occupy the southern half of the country is ever-present and growing. Someone must guard those walls.
  - simonbarker87 13y ago
    Bravo!
  - infinitone 13y ago
    These types of comments are becoming the norm on HN. Perhaps someone should write a script that can generate the reciprocal of the parent like this... it'd be a neat weekend project :d Btw, not saying the comment is bad in anyway.
    - acjohnson55 13y ago
      Agreed! And maybe eventually people will actually start thinking about the opposite position before they post something. Or maybe they actually won't.
  - aaronem 13y ago
    Yes, of course. Because there is no meaningful difference between the government of the United States and that of North Korea.
    - brazzy 13y ago
      The difference is getting smaller every day. That's what this is about.
      - alexeisadeski3 13y ago
        The North Korean government has liberalized a bit, but let's not give them too much credit.
- weland 13y ago
  It's very easy to put it in terms of "Yeah, some civilian deaths are a necessary evil which we burden our conscience with. But we do it because we have to protect our civilians", but I think it's intellectually lazy. Because the next question that should inevitably spring up is ok, ok, but why the fuck would someone in Yemen want to kill US citizens? Once you start answering that question, the question of morality in drone strikes becomes a lot more difficult to answer.
  - blisterpeanuts 13y ago
    Unfortunately, there are a lot of Al Qaeda type jihadists in Yemen who would very much like to kill U.S. citizens. Otherwise I'd agree with you that we shouldn't be there.
    - weland 13y ago
      Yeah, my question was in the somewhat broader sense, as in "Why the hell is there an organization that wants to kill people halfway across the globe".
    - jotaass 13y ago
      I think the point is that those jihadists in Yemen are the direct result of this sort of thing happening in their home towns. It's very easy to recruit someone when they just saw a whole bus of their friends and family being blown off by reasons they can't understand, from a robot in the sky, being controlled by someone miles away. It's a whole chicken and the egg thing.
    - avenger123 13y ago
      I really find this interesting. Taken at face value, US should go and bomb with these drones a whole lot of other people too. And no, they wouldn't be "jihadists". I'm sure there is many many people in the states that very much want to kill other U.S. citizens.
- drzaiusapelord 13y ago
  Feel good nothings like this that ignore both the power and profit of the defense industry are hopelessly naive. I also don't see how blowing away teenagers in an Afghan village who have no idea what 9/11 is, is some kind of macho statement against oppression. Pretty soon, if not already, we'll be killing young people born after 9/11. Not sure if this is the big win the GOP 'defense first' voter thinks it is. Sounds like yet another failure in policy, much like the profitable war on drugs. When we give the nation state carte blanche on both a moral and budgetary level, expect nothing but endless abuses of power. There are 150,000 Iraqi graves that wouldn't have existed if Bush was honest. Lets not forget that. If there's a global bad guy in Nicholson's speech people should defend against, its probably the US military, and I say this as a US citizen.
- zzzeek 13y ago
  you understand that Nicholson's character in that movie was intended to illustrate the hubris and dysfunction of militarism, right? Sorkin would be amazed (actually, probably not) to see that speech being used as an actual argument...the intention was the opposite.
- mikeash 13y ago
  "but you have to give them the benefit of the doubt that they are not doing this for shits and giggles." Wait, I do? Did they pass a law or something?
- Crito 13y ago
  > "but you have to give them the benefit of the doubt that they are not doing this for shits and giggles." I am very confident that I do not have to do that. How are you going to make me?
- yodsanklai 13y ago
  "but you have to give them the benefit of the doubt that they are not doing this for shits and giggles." Maybe you shouldn't give them the benefit of the doubt on those horrible things they are doing in your name. Those numerous killing of civilians should require at least some questioning.
alexeisadeski3 13y ago
Not a whole lot of choice - you want the US to just let the targets run around? Send a strike team in each time? Drop a real bomb or cruise missile (even more civilian casualties - those weapons are larger)?
- mikeash 13y ago
  What would your answer be if the "targets", instead of mysterious and scary terrorists in foreign lands, were regular boring murderers living in the US?
  - rescripting 13y ago
    And not regular boring tried-and-convicted murderers, but suspected murderers who have no trial or recourse.
    - foobarqux 13y ago
      More like those who use persuasive hate speech.
  - alexeisadeski3 13y ago
    Whenever the "targets" have been found within US jurisdiction, they have been treated as regular boring murderers!
- gsnedders 13y ago
  You know what? Yes. I do. Arrest them, try them, when they reach US soil and pose a risk to the security of the US. Until then, they aren't your problem.
  - pantalaimon 13y ago
    The funny thing is that this has been done before, but as there is not enough evidence to try them, they are locked up in Guantanamo indefinitely. I guess drone strikes are just a cheaper solution for that problem, with less outrage than prison camps.
rdtsc 13y ago
It is profitable. If terrorists disappeared tomorrow. Let's say we use our surgical strike weapons to target every cell every member, and in one hour they are gone. What would happen? Billions of dollars disappear from the pockets of everyone in the chain. Military contractors, drone maintenance, promotions, bonuses, career advancements, no more completed missions, medals, no job to go to. So the direct financial and career incentive for everyone in the chain is to always make sure there is a stream of new terrorists, new cells, new intelligence chatter about "the Great Satan". And that is indirectly accomplished by indiscriminately bombing civilians. Everyone who is involved in picking the target and knows it is a funeral, will know civilians will die. I can't help but think they also know it is job insurance as well. They would be stupid not to. American public via media has been tested enough during releases of so many atrocities, torture tapes, lies, monitoring that by now, I think they've built an accurate model of how much outrage will be generated and how much will actually threaten future operations, funding, reelection and so on (so far not much). The bottom line, I don't even know and 100% believe them when they say these are all "mistakes". The incentives and the motivation, especially in the long term, is for them not to really care if civilians get bombed.
- frogpelt 13y ago
  Let me guess, you think there's a cure for cancer but the doctors are withholding it and Exxon Mobil bought the patent for a combustion engine that would achieve 100+ mpg. Any industry that is built on addressing problems that people naturally have is going to generate lots of revenue. It has been proven that people naturally fight with each other. People fight over race, religion, sports, politics, and territory. Nations do the same thing. If you think it would end terrorism by killing all current terrorists and if you think it would even be possible, I think you're misguided.
  - dalore 13y ago
    Let me guess, you said something similar to all the people that said the NSA were tracking everyone.
    - 13y ago
walshemj 13y ago
Possibly the first but its not like the USA is using indiscriminate area bombing like they did in Vietnam or the British using poison gas pre ww2 in Iraq.
hawleyal 13y ago
War cannot be conducted any other way.
- d23 13y ago
  The article's premise is silly -- pure and simple. If you believe war is justified in some cases, then there will be casualties. If a wedding had been hit in Germany toward the beginning of WWII, would we say US involvement should have ceased?
  - qbrass 13y ago
    Involvement couldn't have ceased, since the US wasn't involved in the beginning of WWII.
    - d23 13y ago
      For clarification, I meant at the beginning of US involvement.
Florin_Andrei 13y ago
Borat said it best: "We support your war of terror!"
Zarathust 13y ago
What you say is absolutely true. But another large problem here is that the targeted countries' governments are ok with those strikes for the most part. Have you noticed that those strikes only happen in poor countries with little means of retaliation? A large finance source for the Al-Nushra front in Africa is Jordan/Saudi Arabia. But those countries are allies to the US, so there are no drone strikes there. There are also no strikes in Iran or Syria. Yemen government is very complicit to those strikes and it should at be mentioned in such articles.
- mcv 13y ago
  The fact that a foreign government is okay with killing random civilians, still doesn't mean it's okay for the US to come over and actually do it.
peterashford 13y ago
Killing innocents from the air indiscriminately is pretty much terrorism by any definition of the word. The problem with this approach is that it turns moderates into people who hate you. If the someone bombed my family, I would hate them. It's pretty much human nature.
alexeisadeski3 13y ago
Morally repugnant? I can see the case being made even if I don't agree with it. But self-defeating? Not sure I can even see a plausible argument for that one.

It's very easy to not agree with the way the US government handles these sort of things, but you have to give them the benefit of the doubt that they are not doing this for shits and giggles. It might seem nationalistic to some but it reminds me of a quote from "A Few Good Men" - Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinburg? I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago, and you curse the Marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. That Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives.

throwaway2048 13y ago
saves whose lives, and why should a few of "our side" be more valuable than many of the "bad guys" (which happen to include entire families including innocent women and children)? It should be noted as well that the entire premise of the film wasn't "the ends justify the means" but rather the exact opposite. People can do great evil while believing that every action they take is fundamentally correct and for some kind of nebulous greater good.
- dkersten 13y ago
  Unrelated, but I really hate the phrase "innocent women and children". What about the innocent men? Or the non-innocent women?
lbebber 13y ago
Eh, saves lives inside, disregards lives outside. I know it's a complicated matter, but that reasoning can't be used to justify atrocities such as this one.
pavlov 13y ago
It's very easy to not agree with the way the North Korean government handles many things, but you have to give them the benefit of the doubt that they are not doing it for shits and giggles. After all, they have been at war for over 60 years now. It must be obvious to any patriotic Korean that the danger posed by American imperialists who still occupy the southern half of the country is ever-present and growing. Someone must guard those walls.
- simonbarker87 13y ago
  Bravo!
- infinitone 13y ago
  These types of comments are becoming the norm on HN. Perhaps someone should write a script that can generate the reciprocal of the parent like this... it'd be a neat weekend project :d Btw, not saying the comment is bad in anyway.
  - acjohnson55 13y ago
    Agreed! And maybe eventually people will actually start thinking about the opposite position before they post something. Or maybe they actually won't.
- aaronem 13y ago
  Yes, of course. Because there is no meaningful difference between the government of the United States and that of North Korea.
  - brazzy 13y ago
    The difference is getting smaller every day. That's what this is about.
    - alexeisadeski3 13y ago
      The North Korean government has liberalized a bit, but let's not give them too much credit.
weland 13y ago
It's very easy to put it in terms of "Yeah, some civilian deaths are a necessary evil which we burden our conscience with. But we do it because we have to protect our civilians", but I think it's intellectually lazy. Because the next question that should inevitably spring up is ok, ok, but why the fuck would someone in Yemen want to kill US citizens? Once you start answering that question, the question of morality in drone strikes becomes a lot more difficult to answer.
- blisterpeanuts 13y ago
  Unfortunately, there are a lot of Al Qaeda type jihadists in Yemen who would very much like to kill U.S. citizens. Otherwise I'd agree with you that we shouldn't be there.
  - weland 13y ago
    Yeah, my question was in the somewhat broader sense, as in "Why the hell is there an organization that wants to kill people halfway across the globe".
  - jotaass 13y ago
    I think the point is that those jihadists in Yemen are the direct result of this sort of thing happening in their home towns. It's very easy to recruit someone when they just saw a whole bus of their friends and family being blown off by reasons they can't understand, from a robot in the sky, being controlled by someone miles away. It's a whole chicken and the egg thing.
  - avenger123 13y ago
    I really find this interesting. Taken at face value, US should go and bomb with these drones a whole lot of other people too. And no, they wouldn't be "jihadists". I'm sure there is many many people in the states that very much want to kill other U.S. citizens.
drzaiusapelord 13y ago
Feel good nothings like this that ignore both the power and profit of the defense industry are hopelessly naive. I also don't see how blowing away teenagers in an Afghan village who have no idea what 9/11 is, is some kind of macho statement against oppression. Pretty soon, if not already, we'll be killing young people born after 9/11. Not sure if this is the big win the GOP 'defense first' voter thinks it is. Sounds like yet another failure in policy, much like the profitable war on drugs. When we give the nation state carte blanche on both a moral and budgetary level, expect nothing but endless abuses of power. There are 150,000 Iraqi graves that wouldn't have existed if Bush was honest. Lets not forget that. If there's a global bad guy in Nicholson's speech people should defend against, its probably the US military, and I say this as a US citizen.
zzzeek 13y ago
you understand that Nicholson's character in that movie was intended to illustrate the hubris and dysfunction of militarism, right? Sorkin would be amazed (actually, probably not) to see that speech being used as an actual argument...the intention was the opposite.
mikeash 13y ago
"but you have to give them the benefit of the doubt that they are not doing this for shits and giggles." Wait, I do? Did they pass a law or something?
Crito 13y ago
> "but you have to give them the benefit of the doubt that they are not doing this for shits and giggles." I am very confident that I do not have to do that. How are you going to make me?
yodsanklai 13y ago
"but you have to give them the benefit of the doubt that they are not doing this for shits and giggles." Maybe you shouldn't give them the benefit of the doubt on those horrible things they are doing in your name. Those numerous killing of civilians should require at least some questioning.

alexeisadeski3 13y ago

Not a whole lot of choice - you want the US to just let the targets run around? Send a strike team in each time? Drop a real bomb or cruise missile (even more civilian casualties - those weapons are larger)?

mikeash 13y ago
What would your answer be if the "targets", instead of mysterious and scary terrorists in foreign lands, were regular boring murderers living in the US?
- rescripting 13y ago
  And not regular boring tried-and-convicted murderers, but suspected murderers who have no trial or recourse.
  - foobarqux 13y ago
    More like those who use persuasive hate speech.
- alexeisadeski3 13y ago
  Whenever the "targets" have been found within US jurisdiction, they have been treated as regular boring murderers!
gsnedders 13y ago
You know what? Yes. I do. Arrest them, try them, when they reach US soil and pose a risk to the security of the US. Until then, they aren't your problem.
- pantalaimon 13y ago
  The funny thing is that this has been done before, but as there is not enough evidence to try them, they are locked up in Guantanamo indefinitely. I guess drone strikes are just a cheaper solution for that problem, with less outrage than prison camps.

rdtsc 13y ago

It is profitable. If terrorists disappeared tomorrow. Let's say we use our surgical strike weapons to target every cell every member, and in one hour they are gone. What would happen? Billions of dollars disappear from the pockets of everyone in the chain. Military contractors, drone maintenance, promotions, bonuses, career advancements, no more completed missions, medals, no job to go to. So the direct financial and career incentive for everyone in the chain is to always make sure there is a stream of new terrorists, new cells, new intelligence chatter about "the Great Satan". And that is indirectly accomplished by indiscriminately bombing civilians. Everyone who is involved in picking the target and knows it is a funeral, will know civilians will die. I can't help but think they also know it is job insurance as well. They would be stupid not to. American public via media has been tested enough during releases of so many atrocities, torture tapes, lies, monitoring that by now, I think they've built an accurate model of how much outrage will be generated and how much will actually threaten future operations, funding, reelection and so on (so far not much). The bottom line, I don't even know and 100% believe them when they say these are all "mistakes". The incentives and the motivation, especially in the long term, is for them not to really care if civilians get bombed.

frogpelt 13y ago
Let me guess, you think there's a cure for cancer but the doctors are withholding it and Exxon Mobil bought the patent for a combustion engine that would achieve 100+ mpg. Any industry that is built on addressing problems that people naturally have is going to generate lots of revenue. It has been proven that people naturally fight with each other. People fight over race, religion, sports, politics, and territory. Nations do the same thing. If you think it would end terrorism by killing all current terrorists and if you think it would even be possible, I think you're misguided.
- dalore 13y ago
  Let me guess, you said something similar to all the people that said the NSA were tracking everyone.
  - 13y ago

walshemj 13y ago

Possibly the first but its not like the USA is using indiscriminate area bombing like they did in Vietnam or the British using poison gas pre ww2 in Iraq.

hawleyal 13y ago

War cannot be conducted any other way.

d23 13y ago
The article's premise is silly -- pure and simple. If you believe war is justified in some cases, then there will be casualties. If a wedding had been hit in Germany toward the beginning of WWII, would we say US involvement should have ceased?
- qbrass 13y ago
  Involvement couldn't have ceased, since the US wasn't involved in the beginning of WWII.
  - d23 13y ago
    For clarification, I meant at the beginning of US involvement.

Florin_Andrei 13y ago

Borat said it best: "We support your war of terror!"

Zarathust 13y ago

What you say is absolutely true. But another large problem here is that the targeted countries' governments are ok with those strikes for the most part. Have you noticed that those strikes only happen in poor countries with little means of retaliation? A large finance source for the Al-Nushra front in Africa is Jordan/Saudi Arabia. But those countries are allies to the US, so there are no drone strikes there. There are also no strikes in Iran or Syria. Yemen government is very complicit to those strikes and it should at be mentioned in such articles.

mcv 13y ago
The fact that a foreign government is okay with killing random civilians, still doesn't mean it's okay for the US to come over and actually do it.

peterashford 13y ago

Killing innocents from the air indiscriminately is pretty much terrorism by any definition of the word. The problem with this approach is that it turns moderates into people who hate you. If the someone bombed my family, I would hate them. It's pretty much human nature.

alexeisadeski3 13y ago

Morally repugnant? I can see the case being made even if I don't agree with it. But self-defeating? Not sure I can even see a plausible argument for that one.