[jkraker]

I don't think anyone would argue that at least some of these individuals who are targeted are really bad people who are trying to do orders of magnitude more damage other populations.

So here's the key question: How to you best neutralize the threat of that person? The US has settled on killing them with drones as the "best" solution and its leaders I think truly believe that this minimizes collateral damage. Is there a better course of action besides just letting these people work toward their horrific goals? I think that history has proven that you can't just leave people like this alone and expect them to chill out, so what do you do?

[eevilspock]

1. Walk the walk. Stop doing evil in the world. Evil begets evil. Time and again our national policies put self interest ahead of morality. We support dictators. We arm terrorists. We arm everyone, because there is so much profit in it. We invade other countries on false pretenses. We invade a country promising to back the long suffering minority, but abandon them as soon as our self-interests are fulfilled. Then 10 years later we invade the country again, leaving it in ruins. We bomb other countries without declaring war. We ignore international law, because we can get away with it. We imprison and torture foreign suspects ignoring our own laws and morality about such imprisonments, but of course they're foreigners so morality gets suspended. This is all just off the top of my head.

2. And if we really must attack, send in troops. Yes, some of our troops may die. But it is more honest. War should not be easy. And when we say fuck it, our troop are more valuable than civilians in the firing line, what does that say about our morals? See #1.

---

The US is Quietly Helping Saudi Arabia Wage a Devastating Aerial Campaign in Yemen: https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/03/30/us-quietly-helping-saudi...

How Bribes to Politicians From Arms Dealers Keep Wars Going. And How the Wars Keep the Politicians Going: http://whowhatwhy.org/2016/04/25/bribes-politicians-arms-dea...

[jonnybgood]

These are the right questions. Drones have been determined to be the most effective military weapon at this time, both militarily and politically (the American public doesn't want to send troops in but they also don't want these groups to exist). I think there is a dilemma here.

[gshulegaard]

I think another "right" question is how do we determine who gets put on the drone "hit list"? This article put this question at the forefront of my mind: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/i-am-on-the-us-kill-list...

But this isn't limited to just Drone killings. This applies to much broader contexts...for example the governmental handling of Aaron Swartz comes to my mind (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz).

I think it is becoming increasingly clear that the US government isn't always acting in the best interests of the people or liberty...so how did we get here and how do we fix it? What is a better method?

And that is where I think this conversation starts to get very gray very fast.

[Blackthorn]

> So here's the key question: How to you best neutralize the threat of that person?

Honest question: has assassination ever actually been effective at effecting the political change the assassin wants?

It's probably easier now to assassinate someone than it ever has been in human history, but the actual number doesn't seem higher per capita (maybe it is, feel free to correct me on that).

[omonra]

1. The goal of US drone assassinations is not to effect political change but to keep the status quo. That's a different question than one you asked.

2. On a more general level, your question can be rephrased as 'has violence ever been effective at making a (political) difference'. The answer to that is - absolutely. It has actually been the most effective strategy at effecting change throughout history.

[Blackthorn]

1) Fair point

2) This is not a valid generalization and represents a leap of logic. I was talking specifically of assassinations.

[omonra]

Ok - re #2 - look at what % of political movements succeeded despite most of their leaders being killed. I'd say that since majority of political movements succeed with live leaders, it must mean that the ones whose leaders were killed in time, did not succeed.

It's like the WW2 story about looking for holes in returning fighter planes :)

[jkraker]

I feel like it's more war than assassination. I may be looking at it incorrectly though.

[bainsfather]

Yitzhak Rabin's - his assassin succeeded in halting the peace process Rabin was leading. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yitzhak_Rabin

[dogma1138]

No it didn't, the peace process continued even under the "right wing" government which was elected after wards.

It crumbled for many reasons but the assassination wasn't one of them.

[richmarr]

That's certainly a valid argument on a case by case basis, but as discussed in the article drone strikes are seen as a contributor to radicalisation... which makes it deeply ineffective, or even counter-effective, on a long-term policy basis.