←back to thread

350 points tepidandroid | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.005s | source
Show context
gcatalfamo ◴[] No.21023650[source]
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.
replies(12): >>21023867 #>>21023882 #>>21024090 #>>21024098 #>>21024108 #>>21024127 #>>21024148 #>>21024258 #>>21024722 #>>21025214 #>>21025358 #>>21025914 #
stevenjohns ◴[] No.21024108[source]
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 to try to give themselves legitimacy, but the reality is that it's highly removed from the actual reality of what's happening.

You know what does create terrorists though?

1. Sanctions and

2. Funding of militias.

These are things that everyone - except for isolationists - stand behind and support.

----

Thanks for the 5 downvotes in 10 minutes! Feel free to help me (someone from the region who was directly caught up in not one but two American wars) understand why I should be a terrorist now. I'll also forward the comments to my cousin who was working inside a Red Cross clinic hit by a US airstrike so she also knows what to think. Thanks in advance HN!

replies(7): >>21024190 #>>21024205 #>>21024211 #>>21024314 #>>21024408 #>>21024669 #>>21024695 #
chmod775 ◴[] No.21024190[source]
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 sense.

The only way you're going to get someone mad enough for that, is if the militia you equipped happens to inflict similar cruelties, or you otherwise mess with his nation in a way that is more than just an inconvenience.

If the US imposed sanctions against my country, I'd just shrug. If the US killed my family members and I had no recourse...

replies(2): >>21024460 #>>21045926 #
1. stevenjohns ◴[] No.21024460[source]
> 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...

replies(1): >>21024634 #
2. TeMPOraL ◴[] No.21024634[source]
Because you seem to be missing that it's not the "sanctions" that radicalize people, but the "starve to death" part, or in general, the "death" part. In so far as heavy sanctions breed resentment and further violence, bombing people's families into tiny pieces does that even more.