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Comment by reissbaker | Hacker News Reader

Terrorism doesn't mean "anything that makes someone scared," or else all wars would be acts of terrorism.

There isn't a universally agreed upon definition, but generally it refers to targeting non-combatants: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism

For example, when the Allies tried to assassinate Hitler with a smuggled briefcase bomb during WW2, that wasn't terrorism: that was just regular warfare. Hitler was the leader of Germany and directed its military.

Similarly, smuggling pager bombs to members of Hezbollah generally wouldn't qualify as terrorism, since Hezbollah a) is a militia (famously it's the largest non-state militia in the world), and b) was actively fighting a war against Israel — a war that Hezbollah themselves initiated.

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I can’t reply to zugzug underneath (is there a maximum comment depth), but it feels pretty obvious that the US President is a very legitimate target in any war with the US. Maybe the most legitimate target.

Good luck trying to get them though.

So you're arguing if the US declared war on Venezuela, that Venezuela could just use a drone to blow up the US president and that's just how war should work from now on?

Because it's only a matter of years until drones get small and stealthy enough that nobody is safe; exploding pagers are a clear first step in this direction.

While I'm only adding to the choir of people telling you "of course," since I'm directly the person you're responding to it still feels worth saying: yes, of course, if America and Venezuela went to war, it's completely legal for Venezuela to attempt to kill the U.S. President.

As an American, I certainly hope they would fail. But do I think it's legal? Yes: it's a targeted strike on the leader of an enemy country they'd theoretically be at war with. Do I think it's wise? Well — no, Venezuela has a much smaller military, and assassinating the U.S. President would trigger a massive war that would devastate Venezuela for decades while modestly inconveniencing American taxpayers. But legal? Yes.

Well you need to actually think about what you're saying here. Suppose for example China/Israel/whoever is the first to invent really, really great drones (like the size of a bird or even a bumblebee) that are lethal.

So then China could, at any point, call up the US president and say "Look there's a drone in the room with you right now. Shut down all your nuclear facilities or I hereby declare war and you're dead within 10 seconds." Then failing that they could hit the VP next, Secretary of state, etc etc.

Point being the idea of sticking with WW2 "rules" with current and future technology is laughably implausible.

And I guarantee you the citizens of Israel would NOT think it's perfectly legit, legal, and fair if Netenyahu got assassinated with a drone along with his military commanders.

I don't care whether the citizens of Israel would think it's legal. It's not terrorism if you're at war to attack enemy combatants or their leaders, and that goes for any side in a war: whether you're Israel, Iran, China, America, Russia, Ukraine, whoever. That's just how war goes. There's no point to the term "terrorism" if it just means killing enemy combatants or leaders: it's duplicative of the term "war." What do you think war entails?

If your opponent has way better weapons technology than you: well, it sucks to be on the losing side. But you are, and that's how war goes sometimes. That's what happened to Japan, and the Mayans. If one side has guns and the other has obsidian spears, there's no law that the side with guns has to drop them on the ground because it's unfair to the stone-age side.

actuall hezbollah did crash drone into netanyahy private residence (scratched windows) and iran tried to blow up secretary of defense with ied.

there was 0 discussion about "legit, legal and fair". the only discussion that took place it's that security measures need to be improved to prevent things like this in future.

They could do that now and it might be legal under international laws of war.

We've massed forces for an attack, attacked their ships, violated their airspace with combat aircraft (that's today), and extensively and publicly threatened them. They'd be in their legal rights to strike preemptively, including possibly a decapitation strike (this is why the Dubya administration kept repeating the term "preemptive strike", even though it was obviously nowhere near applying in the case of Iraq—it was a way of asserting its legal basis)

[edit] As thereisnospork points out in a sibling comment, however, this doesn't mean it'd be a good idea.

If US and Venezuela are in a state of war, then the head of the US Armed Forces is a legitimate target.

Not sure why you have doubts about this.

The US and Israel do the equivalent of that and have been for years. An assassination is an assassination. The weapon makes little difference.

I mean of course they could, and should[0] how is that a question?

[0] Shouldn't - classic example of a tactical win being a strategic blunder. Killing the American president and would solidify American public support for the war - which would probably be undesirable in the balance.

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