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U.S. drone strike kills 30 pine nut farm workers in Afghanistan

reuters.com

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Re: U.S. drone strike kills 30 pine nut farm workers in Afghanistan

#101

Post by someotherperson »

chmod775 wrote: post #64
stevenjohns wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's not. These types of comments are extremely inappropriate. Your comment tries to suggest that: 1. Terrorists are people with legitimate grievances 2. Terrorists are representatives of oppressed people 3. Terrorists have genuine reasons for their actions All of these things are false. People do not turn into international, careless murderers just because they experience travesty. Terrorists exploit this concept…

Because your average farmer is obviously going to join up with a militia or terrorist group because of some abstract political thing like sanctions, which he probably has trouble even measuring in his day to life. As opposed to your elected politicians and your military having blown up his daughter at her wedding, scattering her remains over a wide enough area that it is hard even finding anything to bury. Makes sens…

> Because your average farmer is obviously going to join up with a militia or terrorist group because of some abstract political thing like sanctions which he probably has trouble even measuring in his day to life.

Sanctions starve people to death, literally. There is a blockade on food, medicine and your entire life savings turn to nothing. Your life becomes rations. It has such a significant effect that this even turned the non-religious Arab nationalist socialist Ba'ath party into an extremist Islamist brigade in under a decade[0].

These sanctions are even one the major stated reason of the 9/11 attacks by Al Qaeda[1] - not that Saudis flying planes into the world trade center somehow represents the suffering of Iraqis.

I'm not even sure why this would be contested, I don't think you understand what sanctions are or what kind of almost-genocidal effects they have[2] but with your comment I'm suddenly understanding the reasoning of the people downvoting me and upvoting others.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faith_campaign

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motives_for_the_September_11_a...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctions_against_Iraq#Effects...

Re: U.S. drone strike kills 30 pine nut farm workers in Afghanistan

#102

Post by [deleted] »

kmlx wrote: post #83
alpb wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is how you create terrorists. Um no, you are wrong. _What USA does_ is terrorism. When you drop bombs on people out of nowhere, that's called terrorism. Sorry if you're an American but you've got some learning to do about the biggest terrorist organization in the world before calling others a terrorist. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRbnPA3fd5U

> A U.S. drone strike intended to hit an Islamic State (IS) Then what does the IS represent to you? The good guys?

[deleted]

Re: U.S. drone strike kills 30 pine nut farm workers in Afghanistan

#103

Post by smcl »

drcross wrote: post #82
NeedMoreTea wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to surprise everyone though, and I don't understand why. I remember in the early days of our being in Afghanistan, there were a few media pieces reporting that they remembered the last time the British were there, 100 or 150 years ago. The tone was very much that it was somehow surprising the Afghans brought this up again. Yet Britain and the US are built on national history, myths and memories. The US has…

The British oppressed the Irish for 800 years with a systematic destruction of culture and contribution to genocide which halved the population and then recently had the audacity to assume Ireland would be allies during Brexit negotiations.

The negotiations and the deal were extremely dumb in many ways (as is Brexit overall), but this is a really weird take on it. It does make sense that Britain would try to use the fact that Ireland has a substantial amount of trade with the UK and it is not inconceivable that Ireland might therefore in its own self-interest want some sort of deal.

Re: U.S. drone strike kills 30 pine nut farm workers in Afghanistan

#104

Post by tim333 »

It would be an interesting experiment for the US military to try stop killing people. It would mean that if you say had a bunch of ISIS guys going to kill civilians like they did in Iraq you'd have to find a non lethal way of stopping them like drones with tasers or maybe diplomacy / bribery. It would be an interesting tech challenge to make non lethal AI drones say that could stop a traditional military.

Or maybe like the non lethal terminator in Terminator 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3XJxWwYx58

Re: U.S. drone strike kills 30 pine nut farm workers in Afghanistan

#105

Post by luckylion »

EliRivers wrote: post #45
luckylion wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even if the terrorist gets away, it's recognised that it was an individual(s). That's a tough sell when (large) parts of communities are complicit, hiding, funding, supporting the individuals. It's my impression that the primary difference is that we expect better from advanced nations and their citizens, not that there's a large difference in behavior. Denmark officially murdering people because of their sexual id…

That's a tough sell when (large) parts of communities are complicit, hiding, funding, supporting the individuals. I'm unconvinced; I believe it's not a tough sell. This is based on my observations of to whom people ascribe these crimes. They blame individuals first. Even if they should ascribe more blame to the organisations behind those individuals, those individuals are recognised (rightly or wrongly) as the primar…

> They blame individuals first.

That depends on who those individuals are though. The media reports and reactions do change very much if you exchange some words, like replacing "islamist radical" with "white supremacist" or "christian fundamentalist" and "mosque" with "website".

You will certainly get individual names for each attack, the difference is whether having those names concludes the investigation or not. There are exceptions to this, of course, it's just my general expression.

Re: U.S. drone strike kills 30 pine nut farm workers in Afghanistan

#106

Post by TeMPOraL »

ptah wrote: post #98
ageofwant wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is how you create market-share for Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman etc.

yip, can't buy new weapons if you don't use the ones you already have

More like: you bomb them, they eventually find a way to strike back at you, and then you say you need more weapons and better weapons so "such tragedy never happens again".

Re: U.S. drone strike kills 30 pine nut farm workers in Afghanistan

#107

Post by yakshaving_jgt »

alpb wrote: post #78
gcatalfamo wrote: post #14

This is how you create terrorists. What do you think the children and friends feelings towards the US will be from now on? People get radicalized for much less than that.

> This is how you create terrorists. Um no, you are wrong. _What USA does_ is terrorism. When you drop bombs on people out of nowhere, that's called terrorism. Sorry if you're an American but you've got some learning to do about the biggest terrorist organization in the world before calling others a terrorist. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRbnPA3fd5U

> When you drop bombs on people out of nowhere, that's called terrorism

Only if the motive for dropping those bombs is to advance a political/ideological agenda.

We need to be very clear that "terrorism" has a very specific meaning. It's not just a group or individual who terrorises.

Re: U.S. drone strike kills 30 pine nut farm workers in Afghanistan

#109

Post by King-Aaron »

alpb wrote: post #78
gcatalfamo wrote: post #14

This is how you create terrorists. What do you think the children and friends feelings towards the US will be from now on? People get radicalized for much less than that.

> This is how you create terrorists. Um no, you are wrong. _What USA does_ is terrorism. When you drop bombs on people out of nowhere, that's called terrorism. Sorry if you're an American but you've got some learning to do about the biggest terrorist organization in the world before calling others a terrorist. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRbnPA3fd5U

This is such an inane counter-argument.

Re: U.S. drone strike kills 30 pine nut farm workers in Afghanistan

#110

Post by simonh »

black_puppydog wrote: post #40
newguy1234 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also stories like this will be passed down for generations to recruit new jihadists/terrorists. They use this stuff as proof that the USA is anti-muslim or to prove that there is a war against muslims going on. You simply cannot bomb your way out of resolving the terrorism issue. This will probably have the same effectiveness as the war on drugs: lots of money spent....little to no impact on drug smuggling/drug abuse…

> They use this stuff as proof that the USA is anti-muslim or to prove that there is a war against muslims going on. And the worst thing is: from a policy perspective (obviously not arguing about every single US citizen) that's really hard to argue with, given which countries the US has entered into armed conflicts with, which groups of people are most picked upon by politicians, etc.

I think 'entered into armed conflict with' is a judicious way to put it, given 9/11 and the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Neither of these are fights the USA would have freely chosen.

But for every confict in which the USA is fighting one group of Muslims, it's doing so to protect or ally with another group of Muslims. The Afghan government are Muslims, the elected Iraqi government are Muslims, the victims of IS and the Taliban are overwhelmingly Muslims. Saudi Arabia, the west's biggest ally in the region is Muslim. We are allying with tens of millions of Muslims against groups consisting of thousands of Muslims. The west has far, far more Muslim allies than Muslim enemies.

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