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

(www.reuters.com)
350 points tepidandroid | 2 comments | 19 Sep 19 16:51 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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gcatalfamo ◴[20 Sep 19 05:55 UTC] 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.
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alpb ◴[20 Sep 19 08:02 UTC] No.21024258[source]▶
> 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

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yakshaving_jgt ◴[20 Sep 19 08:48 UTC] No.21024521[source]▶
> 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.

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TeMPOraL ◴[20 Sep 19 08:59 UTC] No.21024585[source]▶
This definition only reinforces the parent's point. What it rules out as "not terrorism" is regular organized crime, which isn't too much into bombings anyway. Bombs are almost never used without a political/ideological agenda, because they're too expensive and require too much coordination to make, maintain and deploy.
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yakshaving_jgt ◴[20 Sep 19 09:06 UTC] No.21024628[source]▶
By that logic, you could describe WWII as just a bunch of terrorists who disagreed.

Which of course, nobody does.

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TeMPOraL ◴[20 Sep 19 09:12 UTC] No.21024675[source]▶
Except that to some extent, they do. When my country was occupied by the Nazi Germany, people who fought back were called freedom fighters by us. They were called terrorists by the Nazis.
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1. yakshaving_jgt ◴[20 Sep 19 09:49 UTC] No.21024898[source]▶
Sure, but I don't think that extent is useful for the purposes of this discussion.

FWIW, you and I are likely from the same country.

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2. TeMPOraL ◴[20 Sep 19 10:13 UTC] No.21025002[source]▶
My point being, one country's terrorist is another country's freedom fighter. There is some nuance here, but we're talking about somewhat random and indiscriminate murder of civilians who may or may not be connected to a military group in hopes people at large will stop supporting that group. There's a political agenda in there, and there's death of innocent civilians. There's strong element of fear too - I remember reading articles about drone strikes in Pakistan years ago, in which it was reported that the locals developed a fear of clear blue sky. A fear of good weather, because that's when drones come.

If one objects to calling it terrorism because they're really trying to hit the combatants only, and objects to calling it a war crime because technically there's no war with an internationally recognized nation state, then how should we call it?