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How about drone strikes which target and kill a US citizen and his teenage son?
by D9u 13y ago
How about drone strikes which target and kill a US citizen and his teenage son?
- galenko 13y agoYou stood up for your country, then the government hurt you so bad, that you were taken to the hospital, the government then came to the hospital, took you from there, proceeded to undress and torture you. They then threw you out on a cold field to die (it's -14C there). That vs. Walking down the road, boom, a lot of me is missing, shock, I'm gonna die, ouch, ouch, dead. I know which way I'd prefer to go if it was down to these two choices.
- hobbes 13y agoThe choice you are making between different ways of dying has nothing do to with the point being made.
- gfodor 13y agoAnd the point being made has nothing to do with the protests in Ukraine.
- LekkoscPiwa 13y agoHowever, it is shocking that in America governed by a Nobel Peace Prize Winner we do things that put us on the level of Ukrainian Government, i.e. killing your own citizens without trial based on President's "gut feeling". Disgusting.
- rayiner 13y ago> Walking down the road, boom, a lot of me is missing, shock, I'm gonna die, ouch, ouch, dead. More like, hide out in Yemen for 10 years organizing violent jihad against the United States and protecting Al Qaeda members from the Yemeni government, then walking down the road... It's tremendously demeaning to political protestors in Ukraine to compare their situation to people like Al Awlaki.
- galenko 13y agoI'm sorry to say, no one on the ground is worried about a demeaning post made on HN, I happen to know a little about what it's like, as a lot of my family lives in and around Kyiv and several of them have been lucky to get out of the protests with non life-threatening injuries only. Others we can't get hold of. Feelings are a little irrelevant right now.
- mercurial 13y agoI'm annoyed at myself for feeding this thread which has really nothing to do with the Ukrainian situation, but you make it sound like drone strikes only hit terrorists. I'm sorry, but you've been fed the wrong narrative. Take, for instance, this extract from [1]: An estimated 286 to 890 civilians have been killed, including 168 to 197 children. I'm not saying that it's done on purpose, and intent does matter when considering responsibility. But unfortunately, intent makes little difference to the dead. 1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drone_attacks_in_Pakistan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drone_attacks_in_Pakistan
- dfc 13y agoThis would be much more effective if true. The son was not targeted.
- speeder 13y agoNo he was not, it was an spontaneous explosion
- dfc 13y agoYou think the son was also targeted?
- speeder 13y agoThe son died in a separate attack (ie: NOT with his dad, as some people think), he was sitting in a cafe, and a drone exploded him, and several other cafe patrons. The first US position on the attack was: "We were targeting some Al Quaeda members, this guy was nearby and got himself killed for mingling with terrorists". Recently there has been some conflicting positions about this (including admitting that the person was targeted, or claiming the person was hit by accident while another guy nearby was targeted, or that the whole thing was a accident). Anyway, US should not be bombing countries it is not officially in war against, specially not in urban areas (like a crowded cafe), and killing its own citizens (does not matter if they might be terrorists or not) without trial also should not be done.
- rdudek 13y agoWhat the hell does that have to do with the current situation in Ukraine? Or did you just come here to troll with your anti-US bullshit?
- davidw 13y agoIs there a name for the internet law that pretty much any discussion of a country doing something unseemly manages to drag the US into the discussion?
- madamepsychosis 13y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes
- unethical_ban 13y agoI appreciate perspective and, when more general discussions on government abuse are taking place, comparisons to other 'first-world' countries. You're being criticized because we should be able to have discussions about other parts of the world without changing the subject.
- eyeareque 13y agohis/her point is that while it is hard to imagine, (sadly) this type of brutality/murder is carried out by our (assumed US) government as well.
- strlen 13y agoThanks, I'll tell this to my friends in Ukraine! This will make them feel very warm and fuzzy and reassured, that indeed, is US launching missiles from drones (which is a completely new fact to them and something they've never heard of before!). Similarly, I was going to write my congress-critters to oppose NSA surveillance and drone strikes, but you've taught me wonderful logical insights: see, demonstrators are kidnapped and tortured in Ukraine, so that makes my point invalid and refutes any arguments I had against drone strikes and NSA surveillance.
- unethical_ban 13y agoWhat are you going on about? The person to whom you're replying was only explaining the point of another post, not criticizing or applauding it. You're arguing at the wind.
- eyeareque 13y agoI think you took my comment the wrong way.
- tptacek 13y agoI shouldn't indulge these unproductive subthreads, but I have mild nerd autism and am easily trolled. It's my experience that people who bring up Anwar al-Awlaki and his son --- particularly when using the term "US citizen" in the same breath --- rarely know anything specific about what actually happened. To start with, al-Awlaki and his son Abdulrahman weren't killed together, but at separate times. Abdulrahman was never targeted. He was killed a month later because he was for some reason in the same cafe as Ibrahim al-Banna, the day-to-day operational leader of AQAP. al-Banna was the target of the attack. The USG had no reason to know of Abdulrahman's presence in Shabwa, Yemen, which wasn't under the control of the Yemeni government and continues to be the site of bloody conflicts between militants and the Yemeni state. What was Abdulrahman doing there? Super-parent Anwar al-Awlaki brought him there, to an AQAP war zone that was hosting conflicts not just with the US but with its own host country. Anwar al-Awlaki was targeted by the US. al-Awlaki was a US citizen. But, like the tens of Americans who left the US to fight for Hitler in World War 2, al-Awlaki deliberately placed himself outside the protections of his citizenship and from that vantage point tried to wage war on his home country. al-Awlaki built up a serial murderer's resume as a sponsor, planner, and coordinator of multiple attacks on civilians in the US and UK. The only reason anyone questions his role in those attacks is because they ususally failed --- the planes didn't blow up, the stab victims didn't die. People have strange ideas of how "citizenship" works. The American government has no arrest powers in Shabwa and Anyan Province Yemen. There is no due process in that part of the world whatsoever. The USG had three options in al-Awlaki's case: (1) ignore him and hope that he didn't eventually manage actually blow up a passenger plane, (2) kill him with a targeted airstrike, or (3) invade Yemen to capture him. The USG chose the option that killed the fewest innocent civilians.
- DanielBMarkham 13y ago"I have mild nerd autism and am easily trolled" Dude. If you ever get a firm diagnosis or find a support group please let some of us others know. It's like an epidemic.
- ash 13y agoWhat about (4) trial in absentia? Is it possible under US laws?
- at-fates-hands 13y ago>>> How about drone strikes which target and kill a US citizen I'd use the term "citizen" pretty loosely here. Considering his passport was revoked six month before he was assassinated and the fact he had taken up arms against the US by fighting in another country's army, I'd say he wasn't exactly a "citizen". It's only murky because the US government didn't officially revoke his citizenship.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- whatevsbro 13y agoHow about the life of an American is not more valuable than an Ukrainian's? It's somewhat disgusting to see the distinction between Americans and Others keep being made, as if spying on non-Americans was somehow less evil than spying on Americans, and so on. They're leveraging the nationalism they've programmed into your heads, to make the all-encompassing surveillance seem less ominous. But if you believe they don't spy the fuck out of you Americans too, you're being naive. Controlling you specifically is the US government's primary objective because they're becoming a totalitarian regime. I can't imagine it being any more obvious than what's happening over there. Get out while you can.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- strlen 13y agoPolitics of foreign drone strikes (which I oppose, but don't equate to whole-sale domestic political repression) aside, this is a logical fallacy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque In other words, it's not simply not a valid argument.