Hacker News Reader

Comment by toomanythings2 | Hacker News Reader

The people they kill are those who have killed others. Quit pretending they are innocents just minding their own business.

View on HN

Or sometimes wedding parties, such as one where the US government murdered 47 innocent people:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deh_Bala_wedding_party_airstri...

Educate yourself: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/civilian-deaths-drone-st...

I don't know how you see this as credible evidence. When she links her evidence of the report to the Intercept it links to another Huffington article talking about the Drone Papers. Could you explain how she came to ninety percent with the Drone Papers ?

How do you see anything as credible evidence unless you saw it yourself? HuffPo is a (reasonbly) credible new source that links to The Intercept that built its articles from the Drone Papers. I didn't go independently verify every fact in every article that contributed to the previous one I linked to.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualties_from_US_dr...

Here. Is that sufficient, or would you like video evidence of every drone strike along with complete bios on everyone killed including family member testimonies about their selection for assassination?

Wikipedia is fine, but if you think HuffPo is credible you're living on another planet.

I said "reasonably." I at least followed the trail to The Intercept and figured the stat was in there somewhere.

Again, the first source Wiki provides goes to a 404 page (The Long War Journal). When it elaborates on the Stanford study on the Obama's administration claim on "single digit civilian casualties", it fails to mention that the study was only meant to endorse the Long War Journal's study, not provide the claim wrong.

"However, this does not represent new evidence. Stanford and NYU researchers made no attempt to offer new statistical analysis on the number of civilian casualties caused by drones. Rather, their report is essentially an extended endorsement of a database compiled by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism" - foreignpolicy article third source

To the last thing you state , yes it shouldn't only be just that, but more evidence. Unfortunately, modern journalism can't provide us with those very important details, instead only off topic sources that really don't care if they are one hundred percent correct.

I'm sorry this is just untrue. It would take 5 mins of research to realise how many innocent people have died due to extrajudicial drone attacks.

Generations of people categorised as "collateral damage" to me is evil.

Killing someone because they killed someone is an infinite loop.

So we shouldn't have done anything after all the major terror attacks in the past decade ? You need to elaborate more on your general point.

The burden of being virtuous is that you should not use the same methods that the vile used on you. Something needed to be done about the terror attacks. But that something shouldn't include torture and the summary execution of people.

I don't think we used the same barbaric methods. Terrorists have the intention of killing any nearby civilian , even if they are non government or military most of the time they play their attacks.

We just water boarded them and paraded them around naked in prison before sending them to a CIA black site in a foreign country where they were tortured to death.

By hey, we had paperwork and believed enhanced torture was a legal loophole.

(warning: anecdote)

I knew a guy who joined the US Marines and talked about how he wanted to "shoot towel heads." I don't believe that the US armed forces are purely virtuous at the top, bottom, or in between levels. There likely is a non-zero number of service men/women who get some sort of sick joy out of murdering non-Americans.

I heard they made a movie about that guy: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2179136/

So your saying that the whole United States Armed Forces is non virtuous, based on one guy you knew? This is a huge claim.

That's literally not what he said at all - he said "a non-zero number", meaning (i'm assuming here) an amount that exists but is difficult to quantify, yet not so low as to be completely ignored.

"I don't believe that the US armed forces are purely virtuous at the top, bottom, or in between levels.". I think the non-zero number could be upwards in the positive millions, according to this claim.

My tone above is clearly one of doubt, thus saying "just like there are some residents of middle eastern nations that want to kill American civilians, there are some Americans who want to kill middle eastern civilians."

> I don't believe that [they] are purely virtuous

The only claim I'm making is that there are members of the US military at all levels that don't have God-Like Perfect Morality.

>So we shouldn't have done anything..?

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. So, I'm not saying we shouldn't do anything, though that might would be better than repeating ourselves over and over again in an infinite negative feedback loop, manufacturing that which we seek to eliminate. For every innocent life that has been taken a hundred revengeful combatants are born from that persons friends and family.

>The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. ... Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

-Dr. King, Where Do We Go From Here? 1967

http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/documentse...

So we shouldn't have done anything after all the major terror attacks in the past decade ? You need to elaborate more on your general point.

We'd be a few trillion dollars ahead, and a lot of dead innocent civilians around the world would still be alive.

So: yeah, pretty much. Sometimes turning the other cheek actually is the optimal thing to do.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com