Hacker News Reader

Comment by todayiamme | Hacker News Reader

I don't want to agree or disagree with anything. All I want to agree with is that innocent people have the right to exist without getting shot in the middle of the night.

You know what's the biggest problem over here? It's okay if someone from country ABC kills people living in XYZ. That's collateral damage, but as soon as a few ABC civilians get killed it's war.

It's like somehow everyone in this world have agreed to play a game where they all assume that they're the heroes and the fate of the planet rests on their shoulders. Somehow they've agreed that it's okay to kill other people because they just don't agree with them. Somehow they've agreed that this is just the way things are and this is how they must be.

Why?

I think that it's safe to say that no one can analyze state secrets or anything in this world. It's just a long chain of causality that is propagated forward by implicit agreement.

View on HN

It's facile to assume a moral equivalence between one side accidentally killing civilians in situations where it's extremely difficult to isolate the enemy, and the other side hijacking jetliners and flying them into office buildings.

Agreed. But please do note that the Taliban didn't fly any aircraft into buildings. The ones who did were Saudis. The Taliban want to kick the invader out, just like the Vietcong 40 years ago. If you think the war in Afghanistan is motivated by the desire to kill Al Qaeda, you need to read a thing or two on geopolitics.

"The ones who did were Saudis."

Al-Qaeda are about as Saudi as the IRA is British. The people who make that argument, and forget the close ties between Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in the first place, are the ones who need to read a thing or two on geopolitics.

I am talking about all sides. Not just the USA or the terrorists, but the Iranians, the Pakistanis, the Israelis, the Somalians, the Indians, the Chinese, the Russians...

The world is more complex than these shallow sides. I wish I could tell you what I see in one comment, but I can't. All I can ask you to do is to read history from a neutral perspective and follow the chain of causality down the ages.

I've read enough to know that I don't understand the world, and I never will. I can merely try to help other human beings unconditionally no matter what. This might sound crazy, but provided that a terrorist is willing to take a path of peace and understanding I am willing to give him/her a peaceful home both mentally and physically.

I wish you peace.

  All I want to agree with is that innocent people have the
  right to exist without getting shot in the middle of the
  night.

Which is a naive view, because without American intervention in Afghanistan, their citizens ran the risk of being shot in the middle of the night anyway, because they rubbed some Taliban the wrong way.

Things might be better post-invasion - they damn well should be - but surely the point is that the US, British and other armies must be held to a higher standard than the Taliban?

No-one expects them to be perfect, but they do expect avoiding the killing of innocent civilians to be a priority. If there is evidence to suggest it is not, it should be given due attention.

A prefectly free and unhindered press helps to prevent atrocities by making armies accountable for their actions. Wikileaks might be a very crude tool, but it's definitely enhancing press freedom

The problems in Afghanistan are far deeper than the Taliban and we're now embroiled in a civil war that has lasted for decades.

What was once an Afghani problem is now our problem and we're paying for it in various ways.

Good thing we intervened, because now it is no longer possible for an Afghani to be shot in the middle of the night by the Taliban.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com