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

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 etc.

> 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.

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 a huge national story around independence and the push west into the frontier. The UK has our tales and myths of 1940 and 1066. Scots still remember "the 45" (that's 1745). Why wouldn't Afghanistan or Iraq?

People should travel (and live!) more abroad for a while. As you wrote, many seem to be surprised that the people living in Asia, Africa, etc. are humans too (in the sense of: people with history, dreams, expectations on life, etc.)

Yep. Gunboat diplomacy is not a good way to spread democracy.

I think by bombing other countries and use other military power, US is establishing a target for the terrorists and prone terrorist people, shout out for a peaceful way to solve issues, anyway, it not the policy makers and politicians that got retaliated, it's the innocent civilians.

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.

>hey use this stuff as proof that the USA is anti-muslim or to prove that there is a war against muslims going on.

isn't there though? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-49764305

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.

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.

My hope is that the Internet will have the positive effect of removing this misperception in the long run.

Personally, my eyes were opened quite a while ago when the US dropped one of the largest conventional bombs on some mountain region in Afghanistan where they suspected Taliban leaders to hide out. The next day some guy on Reddit wrote (loosely paraphrased) "Hey, that's were I always travel with my motorbike! Glad I wasn't there when that bomb went down..." and posted a picture of where the bomb hit, with his motorbike in the foreground.

Luckily (for muslims), the focus of racism is slowly changing to Chinese people now. It is as if Americans (and most others) can't exist without an ethnicity to be mad about.

Don't forget when Trump said killing terrorists families, really shortly after the clips were in terrorist recruitment videos.

Weird or not, that's the take in many places, Ireland and Afghanistan alike. A modest proposal, eh?

We have a PM who is filmed responding to a protester in front of dozens of press and TV cameras at an event with "there's no press here", while hearing constant shutter clicks audible in the background. That he's completely tone deaf dealing with the EU, our neighbours or electorate shouldn't be the least bit surprising.

That said, since Irish independence there has been a good degree of desired closeness between the two countries, not least the passport free freedom of movement and voting, which survived the worst of the NI violence. Looking back that can seem surprising. Record numbers of Brits have been applying for Irish passports (a remarkably high number are eligible) since the Brexit vote.

You're mistaken if you think that even the more recent atrocities like the great famine or the violent oppression of the Irish home rule (and ultimately independence) movement have informed the Irish response to Brexit negotiations. It is to their credit that they're pragmatic people, since they could easily dish out a black-eye to the UK if they wanted to.

If Éire had a few UK sponsored drone bombings I’d bet that would change real quick. Otherwise I take your point.