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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Whistleblowers and illegal aliens might be morally equivalent to trade unionists and socialists, but terrorists are not equivalent to communists; I said nothing when they came for the terrorists because the terrorists were trying to murder my children.

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Two points

1. The US has killed many many more children in its retaliation for attacks than any so called 'terror' organization has. (http://www.policymic.com/articles/20884/is-america-like-adam...)

2. The fear of your children dying is the ultimate weapon for people to control you.

There is a strange dichotomy between the pride parents of soldiers have in their child's courage to defend liberty, and the 'do-anything-it-takes-to-protect-my-babies' mindset that seems to pervade the civilian population. One leads to people standing up, the other, cowering.

One of the governments primary jobs is protecting you from aggressors. You may not agree with the method a government uses but that doesn't change it's job description. So when they come for the terrorist they are pursuing a legitimate governmental role.

When they come for the whistleblower and illegal alien it becomes debatable whether they are pursuing a legitimate governmental role. It's very definitely an apples to oranges comparison there.

If the government gets to deny human rights to anyone it with a specific label - what does it matter what the label is?

The government should not be allowed to deny human rights to anyone.

I think you may have missed the part where I said you might disagree with the methods. But my point wasn't regarding methods it was regarding purpose.

The problem, and what bandushrew is saying, is that purposes can be flexible. Once a system or method is legitimised, legalised or even routinely used it can be repurposed for other means. That's the true message of the OP's post - the "coming for" is the method in this case, while the people listed are the individual purposes.

I am not sure what your point is here, unless it is to argue that communists are morally equivalent to terrorists.

Also, a question: do you think there is anyone online reading HN that has not already heard this line of argument, that both governments and terrorists kill children?

Finally, not that I think it's necessary to rebut your post point by point, but: I'm not ok with the USG doing anything to protect my kids. But I am just fine with them going after actual terrorists.

Depends on how you define "communists" and "terrorists". If you say communists are members of the organisation called Communist Party (including main - USSR - party and foreign branches) and terrorists are members of an organisation like Al Qaeda that has terror as its tactics - then yes, they are - or, more correctly, were - nearly equivalent. Communist Party's official goal - at least back in the middle of the last century where it was at the peak of its power - was the overthrow of the capitalist governments, or at least sufficient weakening of them to render them unable to interfere with the Party's goals. In the service of this goal, they did not hesitate to use violence, murder and any other criminal activity. They also waged a multitude of actual wars in many places, including against the US and US allies. Of course, not every rank Communist Party member was engaged in active violence - but also not every rank member of terrorist organisation blows himself up in Baghdad market or flies a plane into a New York building. There are many supporters and enablers that contribute their part to make the final strike possible - by giving money, material support, logistics, cover, etc.

Of course, now that communist parties are mostly a sad joke, the equivalence is absent, but back in the day I would say being a communist - especially outside of Communist block were you didn't have much choice and also almost always did not possess relevant information to make correct conclusions - was not much different on the substance than being, say, Hamas supporter now, even though I realize many people did not understand that. But many people don't understand it now too.

> Also, a question: do you think there is anyone online reading HN that has not already heard this line of argument, that both governments and terrorists kill children?

So? Does this make the argument wrong? Or does this mean that arguments that have been used once, cannot be used again? Arguments as toilet paper, in some way?

I'm French. France was occupied by Nazi Germany (as every American I ever speak to likes to remind me).

Resistants were ordinary French people who blew up trains in order to make the life of Germans in France as difficult as possible -- and of course German propaganda called them terrorists. I'm not putting this word in quotes, because of course that's what they were. They were trying to terrify the occupiers. It was a good thing.

Terrorists try to murder your children because your compatriots murder theirs.

It's not that simple. When 'terrorists' are in their home country fighting the occupiers, it is sometimes justified. When they go into another country to attack civilians any justification of fighting for freedom is lost. As a category 'terrorist' is imprecise and problematic, and likely better off not being used.

Agree totally. The word "terrorist" is useless. It's even less useful when used against anyone who hasn't yet been convicted, in order to justify bypassing normal judicial due process (as the parent was implying, and as many countries have done, including the UK and, shamelessly, France).

The only way for the terrorists to win is to transform modern democracies into paranoid, self-centered, hysteric societies.

Terrorists appear to be winning so far, but it's a long game. We should really not play their game.

Even a suspected terrorist deserves a trial. If they are guilty, if they are a terrorist, then they will be given the punishment they are due.

The problem with deciding that suspected terrorists don't deserve the same rights is that those rights are/should be inalienable. If we decided to start making exceptions, then those rights are no longer inalienable and it's just a matter of degree.

What is a terrorist but a murderer with a political agenda? So perhaps we shouldn't give murder suspects a trial either. And what about a suspect who's attempted to murder? Why give them a fair trial? And so on.

The degree of heinousness of the crime should determine the punishment, not whether the accused deserves a trial.

I was not aware of any terrorist attack on Chicago. Nor do I believe that any terrorists have your children on their checklists.

Hyperbole is a fun game. But this is beneath you.

The government is trying to label just about everybody as a terrorist or suspected terrorist and using this hyped up fear of terrorism to justify a growing police state.

Communism is revolutionary socialism that seeks to break the system from the exterior rather than fix from the interior as your standard socialism would.

Communism has the utter breaking of current society as the only method to obtaining true communism and thus is not as far from being terrorist activity as one might think.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/turkey/1010...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-coor...

No, the terrorists were trying to protect their children, whom the "troops" were heroically murdering.

Do you not know about the drone "signature strikes" that bomb randomly in Yemen and Pakistan, followed by targeted strikes against first responders?

And do you not know that all it takes to become a "terrorist" is to be male, medium age, and killed in such a strike? Unless proven innocent?

Or are you under the delusion that you have to actually join AlQaeda for the US government to count you as a terrorist?

There are a lot of videos on youtube taken by US/British/Whoever troops with helmet cameras on youtube where they get sucked into a gunfight. I've watched a few, usually linked to me by reddit or family members who are in the military. Generally the way it goes is that the camera man will be walking around with his buddies, cracking the crude jokes you would expect, and all of a sudden a mortar round lands near them or the dirt in front of them starts getting whipped up by bullets. Everyone scrabbles and starts firing at various adjacent hilltops or ridges. Fairly intense stuff.

The part that gets me though is how the videos are always labelled. It is always "Gun battle with Al Qaeda" or "Taliban sneak attack"* or whatnot. I don't blame the camera man and company for shooting back or anything, but where are they getting the "Al Qaeda/Taliban" part from? It is not like the attackers are wearing uniforms (or can even be seen in most cases...) It really does seem to be implicitly assumed that anyone who sees value in shooting at foreign troops in their country must be members of Al Qaeda or the Taliban. This rubs me incredibly wrong.

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