Iraqi Prime Minister survives exploding drone assassination attempt | Hacker News Reader

Iraqi Prime Minister survives exploding drone assassination attempt

lite.cnn.com

53 pointsEvanAnderson15 comments

> The US State Department condemned the "apparent act of terrorism" in a statement on Sunday.

What definition of terrorism is used here that doesn't apply to any drone strike that kills civilians?

While it's clear the US government participates in terrorism on foreign soil, it's also clear they would never call what they do "terrorism", so it's simply a matter of "us" vs "them".

"They do "terrorism", we do "peacekeeping"". If you're on the other side, the arguments looks the same.

While it's a challenge to defend the actions of the US Government, there are some major differences between a state actor committing aggression and acts of terrorism.

Can you think of a few?

(Terrorists intentionally bomb a civilian building with a day care containing children in it)

State actors: Declares war by ~committee, funds war by acts of Congress, continues to reauthorize war with acts of Congress, operates one or more hierarchical organizations that screen for mental illness and unfortunately brutally teach compliance with authority instead of creative problem solving, must comply with international (human rights) laws for treatment of humans including prisoners of war during declared wartime, (Edit) include Ear Protection

Terrorists: The US was not considered a state actor in fighting for independence.

And Peacekeepers? Nonviolence is not a normal human response: Peacekeepers train to hold the line without firing, and to deescalate tensions in order to find Peace

> there are some major differences between a state actor committing aggression and acts of terrorism

They are overlapping categories; most terrorism is done by state actors (directly, not even counting actions through proxies, which account for most of the rest.)

Heck, terrorism takes its name from a specific instance of internal state action.

> The US was not considered a state actor in fighting for independence.

Well, it wasn't considered that by Britain. France, OTOH, executed two treaties with the US in 1778, so they clearly had a different view.

The last time the US declared war via Congress was 1942 [https://www.senate.gov/about/powers-procedures/declarations-...].

All wars since then, and many before, started via executive action or response.

All our current wars are merely consented to by Congress. A great many drone strikes (even acknowledged ones) have occurred in countries we are not even nominally at war with, and in conditions that do not comply with the typical treaties or conditions of war.

Terror is a tool of war. If winning of a war is not a goal, then it just pure terror, and inducing it is terrorism.

Actions by large national militaries tends not to be called terrorism. Basically, once a nation has enough influence, they can preform "peacekeeping" actions anywhere they can get away with it.

Convert warfare has been used in the past to describe terrorist actions done through third-parties.

An accident? An assassination attempt by another party member? A hit launched by an organized crime organization? A revenge thing between powerful families? Not every grenade or bomb attack is terrorism. That it was delivered by drone is interesting but could easily be based on other motivations.

The type of technology used has no bearing on the designation of "terrorism".

Any form of violence can have various motivations.

The same one that caused YouTube to try to bury the video titled "The CIA is a Terrorist Organization" < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2khAmMTAjI > and a three letter agencies to visit the author to investigate "anti-american sentiment" < https://twitter.com/_SecondThought/status/132335626258786304... >

Probably: Whether or not civilians were the intended targets.

Here's a TLS version: https://lite.cnn.com/en/article/h_c828f6152428a05569ddfc66bd...

Not sure why CNN even serves non-TLS these days?

Many devices in other countries cannot support TLS. Especially those using the lite version of the website.

Are there browsers in use that don't support TLS? The most low-end browser (as in runs on the most low-end devices) I know of is opera mini and that supports TLS (since their servers do the actual fetching/rendering), looking at https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=lite.cnn.com&... CNN seems to support everything, including stuff like IE7 and android 2.

I'm surprised al-Khadimi got CNN to repeat "assassination is the means of cowards". That guy's a pro.

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