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I'm kind of over the whole "Look, we killed someone far, far, far away for dubious reasons with NEW technology" articles. These folks halfway across the world aren't bothering, nor do they actually threaten my freedom in any way shape or form.
It's not clear to me why we're focusing on killing people in Syria. What are we gaining from doing this?
Hurras al-din has also given support to ISIS, who destabilized a good chunk of the middle east. It's a bad look since a lot of Americans died to effect regime change in Iraq. If Iraq ends up turning into a full-blown theocracy, it makes our efforts there seem even more wasteful.
According to the Russians, he was trying to gather supplies to make illegal chemical weapons but definitely take that with a grain of salt.
Supposedly this helps US goals in Syria, but TBH I'm not really sure what the US goals are. I suspect that both our current and previous president would have a hard time articulating goals that are consistent with their actions in Syria
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I think it's more along the lines of you can hit a car or a meeting without decimating everything nearby. It's the difference between sending an assassin and a suicide bomber.
I understand that. I'm saying it's a false dichotomy. Like, would you rather drink a shoe leather smoothie or a shoe polish smoothie? Neither! Why are we drinking shoe related smoothies at all?! Why do we need to assassinate anyone at all?
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I think it's more along the lines of you can hit a car or a meeting without decimating everything nearby. It's the difference between sending an assassin and a suicide bomber.
But usually we despise both suicide bombers and assassins, not congratulate the assassin on killing so few bystanders. The question by GP is more along the line of "what if instead of spending lots of money to kill fewer bystanders we spent that money to reduce the number of people that are so dangerous to us that we kill them". Of course we know that won't happen because building weapons helps US companies and build…
Or just build a hospital somewhere and watch as it gets captured/used by the regional dictator.
Yes, wars are bad. Yes, if it were that easy to export peace and prosperity we wouldn't be talking about it, but the reality is that there are power structures that consider their selfish short term goals more important than the lives of many-many of their fellow humans. (Eg. Putin, Xi, Assad, etc.)
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While we can debate the level to which America needs to get involved, are you forgetting 911 or any of the other terrorist attacks? It honestly feels downright insulting to the victims of terrorism that you would imply these extremist groups do not threaten your freedom. The article specifically references that these devices used on members of aal-Qaida; the group responsible for 911.
The war on terror has killed easily three orders of magnitude more people than 9/11, and antagonizes the US with the regional population. It's neither proportional nor effective.
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They’re certainly bothering people and threatening peoples’ freedom. Thanks to the export of fundamentalist Islam from certain countries, my home country of Bangladesh is a more dangerous place today then when we left 30 years ago. (And it was under a military dictatorship then!) Unsurprisingly, we take harsh measures to crack down on fundamentalism, including banning Islamist parties and executing terrorists: https:…
They’re certainly bothering people and threatening peoples’ freedom. All of them? What percentage of the dead were terrorists? Because "they" in this case is referring to around 1 million people now.
It's a vicious cycle, and the murdering of innocent people only makes it worse.
It's interesting how public has forgotten that ISIS is no longer any different from your usual terrorist organization with cellular structure, which is actively eradicated by both Syrian government and Kurds. So what mandate US forces have in Syria for their military activity? Not only they occupy some strategic land (Al-Tanf), but also actively kill military forces of the internationally recognized government (you c…
I wonder what the relevance of a government is if they're internationally recognized, but don't actually control their own territory. Who operates where and does what has always been more fluid than just 'well they're internationally recognized'.
After Trump declared that US troops will be withdrawn and they will not defend Kurds against Turkish forces, the government has easily reclaimed control over the large area with a very limited fighting.
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They’re certainly bothering people and threatening peoples’ freedom. Thanks to the export of fundamentalist Islam from certain countries, my home country of Bangladesh is a more dangerous place today then when we left 30 years ago. (And it was under a military dictatorship then!) Unsurprisingly, we take harsh measures to crack down on fundamentalism, including banning Islamist parties and executing terrorists: https:…
If radicalization in these countries works anything like it does in the west, then the missiles would be more effective at preventing radicalization if pointed at social media tech executives.
But yeah, I’m sympathetic to your overall point, for sure.
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Yeah, the headline seems to imply it’s some new ‘big bad’ where the article just slowly exposes that it’s a non-explosive missile. Killing fewer people by not combusting the surrounding area sounds like an improvement.
Doesn't that line of reasoning presuppose you need to be firing missiles into crowded areas? Rather than develop those missiles, what could be achieved by investing those millions into developing economies and relationships abroad?
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Extrajudicial targeted assassinations are pretty far on the bad side, no matter how few other people get killed in the process. Sure, if you are doing it, killing fewer bystanders is preferable on the surface. But if individual assassinations are less likely to cause an international outcry since fewer people died that likely leads to more assassinations.
Isn't the US is, like, at war in Syria? Wars being a terrible thing and all, one won't expect a speedy and fair trial on a battlefield.