True. The United States is the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world (School of the Americas, Bay of Pigs, Iranian-Contra, Operation AJAX, COINTELPRO, Operation Mockingbird, United Fruit...)
Sometimes I miss the days when such conversation was permitted. I’d vouch it, but I like my vouch privileges too much to risk it.
If the primary conversation - derived from the linked article - is about the US and about a topic having to do with something negative about the US, then it's both interesting (as the root source) and makes reasonable sense that it should be in the thread.
Otherwise it's nothing more than a political agenda - someone being triggered and unable to control theirself - being force-wedged into a conversation where it doesn't belong and it degrades the quality of HN dramatically. As it would if the same treatment were applied to any other nation.
Imagine if every large thread had someone trying to force comments about all the bad things France or Britain have done. Every single major thread. Now apply it to dozens of nations. Of course that wouldn't be allowed because it would be insane. It's insane to allow it for the US just the same.
It's not interesting to you. Not every comment needs to be interesting to everyone.
> Every major thread on HN has at least one comment trying to force the America Bad angle into the conservation
This is an extreme exaggeration. Plenty of large threads don't discuss this. I'd wager the vast majority.
> If the primary conversation - derived from the linked article - is about the US and about a topic having to do with something negative about the US…
There are plenty of sub-conversations on every thread that aren't explicitly about the main topic. On this post alone, there are comments about the definition of terrorism, bitcoin, health insurance laws, American military action, etc. It seems like you're singling out "criticism of America" as the only taboo topic for no real reason.
> Imagine if every large thread had someone trying to force comments about all the bad things France or Britain have done.
Nobody is "forcing" comments. People are leaving comments. About all sorts of opinions, including those criticizing other countries. And absolutely none of this happens on "every large thread".
> someone being triggered and unable to control theirself
Didn't sound like the commenter was triggered at all.
A military attempt to overthrow a violent leader of another country doesn’t really land in the same category of shutting down hospitals and killing sick people with no political power.
Or insurrection.
Unless we're talking about some fourth-world wish-we-had-even-bananas republic, there will be geopolitics in play. The rebelling groups are almost certainly being funded, either directly or indirectly, by foreign governments.
Those rebels, are they terrorists or freedom fighters? Are the foreign governments funding terrorism or supporting unnecessarily violent grass-roots opposition? Where does political meddling end and waging a covert war begin?
Can you ever be cynical enough?
Trying to quickly or quietly overthrow a government is pretty much the opposite of that effect. You want a quick change and the end goal is power, not fear for the sake of fear.
Which groups do you think is fear for the sake of fear? Lots of groups are characterized that way for propaganda purposes, and deep down inside there are probably more than a few that just want the world to burn, but im not sure any exist that literally claim to just want to cause fear without tying it to some broader political goals.
> Trying to quickly or quietly overthrow a government is pretty much the opposite of that effect
I agree generally that quiet coups aren't generally in the terrorism category, but i still think they have much more in common with terrorism than (apolitical) ransomware does.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_military_intervention_in_...
Syria is just as complicated if not more so. It turned into a proxy war between the US and Russia and don't forget ISIS and the many different factions who have received funding from multiple sources.
How many people have been killed in the US this year causing and because of the protests at the hands of government and extremists? I don't think we'll be getting a NATO bombing anytime soon. I also can't picture that happening in Nigeria.
Pandora's box
A state military attacking a perceived threat to the national security of that state (while at the same time doing its damndest to make sure nobody knew about it) is pretty clearly outside the definition of terrorism. It fits squarely into espionage / warfare.
None of the terrorism boxes get ticked. It wasn't a splashy, overt thing meant to instill fear. It wasn't carried out against emotionally-charged targets attempting to incite, nobody claimed credit, etc.
Everything adverse that happens is not terrorism. The term has kinda worn itself out, which is bad, because that word invokes a whole bunch of executive power shifts.
Also probably a bit of, because we did it instead of it being done to us.
Al Qaeda was trained by the CIA. I think it's relatively accepted that there were no WMDs in Iraq, so that entire invasion/war could be classified as terrorism. There are countless drone strikes with civilian casualties around the world. Whether or not you agree with why we did it, the CIA is credited with Stuxnet (it's terrorism even if you think this is one of the "good" ones).
There are certainly more, but let's not pretend like the US isn't intimately involved in directly inserting itself into international affairs illegitimately.
https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/projects/drone-war
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cyclone
https://www.wired.com/2014/11/countdown-to-zero-day-stuxnet/
"Haqqani - one of bin Laden's closest associates in the 1980s - received direct cash payments from CIA agents, without the mediation of the ISI.
"This independent source of funding gave Haqqani disproportionate influence over the mujahideen."
"Haqqani and his network played an important role in the formation and growth of al Qaeda, with Jalalhuddin Haqqani allowing bin Laden to train mujahideen volunteers in Haqqani territory and build extensive infrastructure there."
From a more extensive page linked from there:
"Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, an associate of Bin Laden's, was given visas to enter the US on four occasions by the CIA [...] Rahman was a co-plotter of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing."
"Afghan Arabs 'benefited indirectly from the CIA's funding, through the ISI and resistance organizations [...] at an estimated cost of $800 million in the years up to and including 1988'"
"The Guardian alleges that the CIA helped Osama bin Laden build an underground camp at Khost, which bin Laden used to train Mujahideen soldiers."
In a 2004 article entitled "Al-Qaeda's origins and links", the BBC wrote:
"During the anti-Soviet war Bin Laden and his fighters received American and Saudi funding. Some analysts believe Bin Laden himself had security training from the CIA."
"Two-time Prime Minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto said Osama bin Laden was initially pro-American [and] Robin Cook, Foreign Secretary in the UK from 1997–2001, wrote, 'Throughout the '80s [Bin Laden] was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis'.
And what do the Saudis have to say about it?
Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia stated (in the wake of 9/11):
"He [Osama bin Laden] came to thank me for my efforts to bring the Americans, our friends, to help us against the atheists, he said the communists. Isn't it ironic?"
However, it's hard to avoid there being some undesired casualties in war, especially when the the fighters on the opposing side are using guerilla tactics and hiding within the civilian population, such as deliberately fighting, sniping, or using mortars from within what are otherwise civilian compounds, or even mosques, forcing the US to either ignore the attacks (unacceptable) or respond and attack mosques and civilian compounds.
All of our soldiers are unformed, with a flag, and follow rules of engagement that involve not attacking anyone except positively identified targets (i.e. observed holding weapons). Terrorist groups operating in the middle east wear no uniform and exploit our rules of engagement by attacking, dropping their weapons before the coalition can respond, then pretending to be civilians. Even though they're the only men-of-age in an area from which an attack just took place, since they stashed their weapons somewhere, the rules of engagement mean that our troops can't do much if they didn't observe a person holding a weapon.
Uniformed soldiers fighting other uniformed soldiers is different than terrorists that attack civilians or soldiers and then hide, pretending to be civilians.
The Iraq war was started on pretenses that we now know are false, but let's not conflate that with groups that deliberately target civilians (with suicide bombs in shopping centers), or conduct attacks even on military facilities and then pretend to be civilians when pursued for a counter-attack.
Maybe for the second Iraq war, but for the first one that's bullshit – before the first Iraq war, Iraq was the richest third world country. The US bombed it back to the stone age, using more bombs than were dropped on Germany during WW2, hitting civilian infrastructure like water treatment plants, which then resulted in the following years in hundreds of thousands of dead children.
What could possibly go wrong.