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Comment by enriquto | Hacker News Reader

> But it's not a war crime to make a mistake.

I suppose that you are from the USA and your family is living there. Imagine that some afghan-controlled drone intended to kill some U.S. soldiers (a legitimate target because they are enemy combatants). But instead they kill your family. If it was a mistake, by the own account of the drone operator, would you still maintain that the killing of your whole family was not a war crime? Would you defend the drone operator in that case? Please notice that at the moment when they were killed, they were just enjoying a picnic in a field, minding their own business, unbeknownst that in another valley a few miles away there was a secret military training camp. I need to hear from you if you honestly think that the murderer of your family would be innocent in that case.

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There is such a thing as criminal negligence in choosing and attacking enemy targets.

But no, adding a whole bunch of emotional baggage to the act does not suddenly make any collateral death a war crime as you imply here.

Bombing runs are woefully innarcurate though, so the good thing is when we have better weapons we'll start using those instead. Unlike insurgency groups who will often kill civilians as a means. Think that was partly the above poster's point.

Why would I defend an enemy combatant? The issue is whether it is a war crime, it is not. That in no way diminishes the horrible hellscape that is war.

>>>If it was a mistake, by the own account of the drone operator, would you still maintain that the killing of your whole family was not a war crime?

That's not a war CRIME, that's just war. If/when the shooting eventually starts with the Chinese (or the North Koreans), I and my family live down the street from some of the likeliest theater ballistic missile targets in the region. If an errant TBM levels my apartment building, I'll absolutely do everything I can to terminate the enemy soldiers with extreme prejudice...but I recognize that they are doing their jobs, and unless it is proven they were clearly aiming for a civilian target (such as a sports event), then no, I wouldn't consider their acts CRIMINAL.

I'm going to be a little dismissive of the question, but that's how the laws work in the united states. If someone was drunk that's a little different, but from the perspective of someone making a mistake on the road, and a family ends up dead - the person that made the mistake (assuming they prove that in court) does not end up with a murder charge. It may still end up being manslaughter and jail time.

Now to more specifically reply. So in the United States we may certainly have war on our doorstep at some point in the future. But our country tries to prevent that at ALL COSTS. We do so by making sure other countries are stable. We may fuck up by inserting into the wrong countries. but if ALL COUNTRIES just stabilize themselves we would NEVER have to go. And by the way, that's why the united nations was created. It would (or should) never allow the united states to insert themselves in a war that was not just. It may end up in an unjust position, but that's not where we started.

> that's not where we started.

This is just wishful thinking. The difference between the Afghanistan when Bush decided to invade it and now is that the Taliban are stronger, have more equipment, and basically sure nobody will ever invade them again after the lessons they gave to the USSR and the USA.

Same when you look at Irak or Libya. Your idea of stabilizing is completely at odds with what happens in reality.

> But our country tries to prevent that at ALL COSTS.

I agree. Allcaps included.

> We do so by making sure other countries are stable.

Ehh... that part is more dubious. For example see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Central_Intelligence_...

What am I supposed to be looking at here. I see an operation to capture Osama. Black sites, some weird other stuff. But I am not finding a specific example of something causing instability (at least on purpose).

I counted at least three (successful) coup d'état, and I'm not sure if I should count also the operations in Cuba. Also, there are many items about guerrilla and anti-guerrilla support. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_state-sponso...

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