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

(www.reuters.com)
350 points tepidandroid | 4 comments | 19 Sep 19 16:51 UTC | HN request time: 0.021s | source
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whiddershins ◴[20 Sep 19 12:15 UTC] No.21025779[source]▶
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?

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vonseel ◴[20 Sep 19 12:43 UTC] No.21026033[source]▶
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.

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mikeash ◴[20 Sep 19 12:51 UTC] No.21026105[source]▶
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.

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rayiner ◴[20 Sep 19 13:05 UTC] No.21026222[source]▶
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.
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mikeash ◴[20 Sep 19 13:07 UTC] No.21026247[source]▶
“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.

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rayiner ◴[20 Sep 19 13:15 UTC] No.21026301[source]▶
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.
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mikeash ◴[20 Sep 19 13:22 UTC] No.21026367[source]▶
I didn’t say what China was fighting for. Why are you so sure it’s bad?
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rayiner ◴[20 Sep 19 13:54 UTC] No.21026671[source]▶
Because they’re a communist regime?
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mikeash ◴[20 Sep 19 13:58 UTC] No.21026710[source]▶
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?
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1. rayiner ◴[20 Sep 19 14:40 UTC] No.21027171[source]▶
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.
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2. mikeash ◴[20 Sep 19 15:44 UTC] No.21027966[source]▶
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?
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3. likpok ◴[20 Sep 19 17:16 UTC] No.21029049[source]▶
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.

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4. mikeash ◴[20 Sep 19 18:22 UTC] No.21029744{3}[source]▶
So it’s nothing about the morality of killing dozens of innocents. It’s just might makes right?