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

I wonder why, even though we generally try to be skeptical of the news, I’m not seeing many comments here that question whether what this article is saying is even accurate.

How exactly does the reporter know which people are IS fighters? Is there some notion that militants don’t ever also farm?

Also in these comments there seems to be a huge double standard. The idea the United States might accidentally kill some civilians is somehow morally outrageous, but the regular and deliberate targeting of civilians by the Taliban and the IS as they attempt to completely destabilize the Afghan government is taken as somehow normal?

> How exactly does the reporter know which people are IS fighters? Is there some notion that militants don’t ever also farm?

Guilty until proven innocent, right?

I think the parent is saying "how do reporters have better intel than the military?"

Then of course it might be the case here that civilians were targeted, by mistake or on purpose. But the parent point is quite valid.

The double standard come from the fact that the USA is usually held to higher standards than terror organizations.

But you are correct, killing civilians with drones isn't much different compared to other acts of terror.

> How exactly does the reporter know which people are IS fighters? Is there some notion that militants don’t ever also farm?

The article says it explicitly: the information is sourced from Afghan officials.

You could say that this may not be the most trustworthy source in this case, and I'd agree, but on the other hand, the problem of mounting civilian casualties of US drone strikes is already a decade if not more old, was widely reported on a few years ago, and is continuously being investigated by various organizations. If what Afghan officials are saying is true, it would not the least bit surprising - and that fact is a huge problem.

> Also in these comments there seems to be a huge double standard. The idea the United States might accidentally kill some civilians is somehow morally outrageous, but the regular and deliberate targeting of civilians by the Taliban and the IS as they attempt to completely destabilize the Afghan government is taken as somehow normal?

I think no one in their right mind would say that what the ISIS or other terrorist groups are doing is anything but repugnant. They're doing evil things, that's a baseline fact, so it's unmentioned - there's nothing interesting in pointing this out. What's more interesting is where did ISIS come from and why are they doing what they're doing, and a significant part of the answer to that question is American military excursions and regular, continued murder of civilians using remote-piloted drones. ISIS may be monsters, but the US is supposed to hold itself to higher standards, not step down to the same level.

That’s simply untrue. They are trying to set up a Caliphate. Not everything is a reaction to something the US did.

Shall we just let Israel get wiped off the map while we are at it?

Edit: “they” in my sentence is IS, and Al-Qaeda, if that wasn’t obvious.

Acts of terror are commonly referred to in that manner because targeting civilians is the intention, with a desire to influence the population and politics.

Killing civilians accidentally is virtually guaranteed when engaging in military action.

So the tactics are extremely different in why they work, if they work at all. They are very different in the percentage of military vs civilians killed. They are very different in intention. The fact that they share some aspects in common doesn’t make them the same.

Can we really call it an accident when strikes are made at weddings, funerals, farms, vans, and even double striking to kill first responders based on a phone chip signal that might have, at some point in time, been used by rebels?

In fact it really doesn't matter how we see it, but how they see it.

Every strike has a chance of producing more rebels than they kill and I have a hard time thinking the arms industry doesn't also believe that.

Nothing to do with the power vacuum left by the US after destroying Iraq and Afghanistan? Nothing to do with weapons and training distributed in that region by the US many years ago? Nothing to do with drone strikes fueling anti-American sentiment that's then used as motivation and justification for performing acts of terror?

I didn't say US is the whole reason here. But it's a big part of it.

I think Reuters is generally a reliable source, but I agree with your double standard points.

This was a horrible accident, but you have to realize there are probably some very bad people they intended to target and the US doesn't blow up random Afghan farmers for fun and games.

HN is quite the liberal community so I'm not surprised if some of the posters here think the Trump administration is more evil than the people who want to blow up the Great Satan.

You, sir, have a lot of reading to do. I'd start with a few histories of the region, then move into political theory.

May I recommend the following?

"Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History" by Thomas Barfield

The "Good Guys" are fighting the "Bad Guys" because the "Bad Guys" do "Bad Guy Stuff".

It is taken as normal that the "Bad Guys" are "Bad". When they do "Bad Guy Stuff", it is further justification for the "Good Guys" continuing to target them. "Normal" does not mean "OK", it just means that it is what is expected - "Bad Guys are Bad" is not news.

It is morally outrageous when the "Good Guys" do "Bad Guy Stuff", because it calls into question the whole "We are good, they are bad" story that the "Good folk at home" are told. How can we be the "Good Guys" if we are killing innocents?

It also reinforces the "We are good, they are bad" story that the "Bad Guys" are selling their folk at home. When the "Great Satan" kills your innocent friends and family when they are at work picking pine nuts, or at a wedding, it becomes easier to encourage you to take up arms against them.

I’m against continued involvement in Afghanistan, for financial and practical reasons. That said, many folks have trouble wrapping their heads around all this because they’re moral relativists. The problem with terrorism is not merely the mechanics of asymmetric warfare. Civilians dying is bad and we should avoid it, but it’s obviously not morally dispositive since we do it too. If a foreign power occupied America, Americans would do the exact same thing. In fact, that’s what Americans did during the Revolution. You can’t hope to make sense of the issue unless you morally analyze the ends for which people are fighting. Islamic State is wrong and must be stamped out because the end for which they’re fighting is wrong. Americans fighting the British to establish a Republic, by contrast, is right.

I like to imagine the reaction if it happened here.

Imagine that, say, China blew up 30 Americans in the US with a missile. And their reaction was, “sorry, my bad, I thought they were terrorists.”

Can you imagine the response? I think we’d have a nuclear war before the end of the day.

The double standard is easy to understand. The Taliban is evil, and we think that we are not.

"The enemy is stupid; they think we are the enemy, but they actually are the enemy!" (French comedian Pierre Desproges)

Of course. And? The implications of that hypothetical are surprising only to a very few with out of mainstream belief systems. Of course it’s worse when it happens to us than when it happens to someone else. The point hardly bears mentioning.

Wow, whiddershins, those are some baseless comments.

> How exactly does the reporter know which people are IS fighters?

You aren't reading carefully at all. The reporters are quoting Afghan officials. The reporters are quoting American officials. Afghan officials have indicated at least 30 civilians were killed and 40 were injured in an attack that accidentally targeted farmers and laborers. American officials "are working with local officials to determine the facts."

The reporters have not made the claim you are attributing to them.

> The idea the United States might accidentally kill some civilians is somehow morally outrageous, but the regular and deliberate targeting of civilians by the Taliban and the IS as they attempt to completely destabilize the Afghan government is taken as somehow normal?

That's a strawman, and you ought to avoid that sort of thing. (edit: although you've suckered some people into arguing about it. kudos!)

“This was a horrible accident, but you have to realize there are probably some very bad people they intended to target and the US doesn't blow up random Afghan farmers for fun and games.”

We wouldn’t accept this excuse in my hypothetical, so we shouldn’t accept this excuse when we’re the ones murdering dozens of innocents.

You don't even have to go that far - imagine China flying combat drones over US territory.

The US is a military power house, and they use and abuse this power to maintain their ways of life, no matter the costs to others.

We wouldn’t accept the excuse because what China would be fighting for in your hypothetical would be bad, while what we’re fighting for is good. You can’t just transpose the hypothetical to suggest hypocrisy because there is none.

I didn’t say what China was fighting for. Why are you so sure it’s bad?

Americans don't behead innocent people in the streets and don't relentlessly kill people just because they don't share the same religious or political beliefs.

Your comparison is absurd, ignoring the politics of China launching a missile at American soil. The US War in Afghanistan is 17 years old. There were two suicide bombings just three days ago, each killing over 20 people.

Imagine a group of people who want to kill you because of where you were born. Who want to throw you off a building because you're homosexual.

When America kills terrorists, is it equally as bad as when terrorists bomb Americans or Europeans? Is killing in order to police the same as killing out of deep, radical beliefs (and hate)?

There's so much error being displayed here I barely know where to begin.

> Civilians dying is bad and we should avoid it, but it’s obviously not morally dispositive since we do it too.

Of course the killing of civilians is "morally dispositive." If civilians were accidentally killed in the strike our military will exhibit some accountability, and if civilians were deliberately targeted it would be a crime and it would be prosecuted.

When the Taliban kills civilians, that's the point. The civilians are the target.

Civilian deaths are an outrage but there's no moral equivalence between the parties or their actions.

> If a foreign power occupied America, Americans would do the exact same thing. In fact, that’s what Americans did during the Revolution. You can’t hope to make sense of the issue unless you morally analyze the ends for which people are fighting. Islamic State is wrong and must be stamped out because the end for which they’re fighting is wrong. Americans fighting the British to establish a Republic, by contrast, is right.

We aren't talking about the Islamic State, we're talking about the Taliban.

This just scratches the surface of how badly you misunderstand the conflict. There are a number of parties involved in the conflict in Afghanistan - including the Taliban and IS - and some of them are our allies. It is literally nothing like Americans fighting the revolution.

(in that bizarre analogy, we would be... France?)

Think the size of this incident prompted immediate reporting, so I'd trust it to be fairly accurate in scope, but typically statistical sourcing is done by UNAMA (cited in article) and I'd consider them authoritative and accurate.

To your point, typically the casualty verification (which UNAMA is tasked with) takes a very long time. Here's an example of three UNAMA reports stating three widely different casualty figures for aerial operations in 2011:

- 2011 report: deaths and injuries at 305 (pg 24)

- 2012 report: deaths and injuries at 353 (pg 31)

- 2014 report: deaths and injuries at 415 (pg 94)

These reports were released years apart and reflect revised figures for 2011. It simply takes that long to verify accounts and corroborate reports, reconcile conflicting information. It will take years to get a definitive confirmation for this incident.

Here's something seen in the UNAMA reports that's more harrowing than drone weapon releases mentioned in the article. When a drone operator merely reports activity, a typical response to it is that the local forces send out a team to investigate the location. They do this at night. Vehicles pull up, spotlights come on and distorted loudspeakers come on shouting screams at people to stay inside and wait. Disoriented and confused civilians, trying to make sense of the noise, do what any normal human beings do, which is go outside to see what this is all about. At that point, even children get shot because they're contravening instructions. They become a number in a report.

This is death by process.

Why is my comparison absurd? Let’s say that the Chinese drone operators thought they were targeting an ISIS cell. (This is, in fact, what I had in mind.)

Anyway, I don’t have to imagine. There are, in fact, lots of people in this country who want to kill people for having the wrong birthplace or sexual orientation. One of them massacred twenty people just a few weeks ago.

Because they’re a communist regime?

A more apt question: why does the parent think the reporters claim to have better intel than the military?

It is baffling how poorly many people here read.

So anything they fight for must be bad no matter what it is? Even if they’re hunting down ISIS and al Qaeda members just like we are?

I assumed your hypothetical was framed in terms of the existing situation and interests. That it wasn’t along the lines of: “the US government has fallen to ISIS and cannot police its own territory; China accidentally kills some US civilians while bombing extremists.” If that was your hypothetical, then I think you’d be surprised how few Americans would be outraged. I’m pretty sure it’d make for a decent movie.

Sure, it’s in terms of the existing situation. Why can’t there be an ISIS cell in the US right now, or at least why can’t the Chinese think there is one?

Recall that time when the U.S. blew up a Chinese embassy. The excuse was "sorry, our bad, we were using an outdated map."

Because the US government is a) strong and b) doesn't think there's one.

Neither of those is true of Afghanistan. The Taliban is quite capable of at least holding on, and the non-Taliban Afghani government isn't opposed to US support.

As evidence of this, President Ghani's reaction was to promise check and balances to reduce casualties, not kick the US out of the country.

So it’s nothing about the morality of killing dozens of innocents. It’s just might makes right?