[DLA]

Love how “some employees” at Google are bent out of shape that Google would help the DoD. To those employees: it’s cool, just sit back, write code, drink your fancy coffees and be self absorbed while patriots defend you and do the hard work of defending freedoms.

[dang]

Please do not post ideological flame tropes to Hacker News. They're predictable, and so do not gratify intellectual curiosity. They lead to flamewars, which destroy the container here. We all have an interest in not letting that happen. Please (re-)read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

The good things about HN are all fragile. The default forces of the internet all tend to destroy them. Everyone posting here is responsible to take care of the container—just like you wouldn't litter in a city park, or set one on fire.

[craftyguy]

> while patriots defend you and do the hard work of defending freedoms.

You probably don't realize that there are war veterans, and active service members (e.g. National Guard, Reserves) working for tech companies like Google. But then again, such realization would be a real downer to your agenda.

[IntronExon]

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/world/asia/drone-strikes-...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/nov/24/-sp-us-drone...

Whatever you think of civilian deaths, don’t forget that we assasinated 6 US citizens without a trial. Freedoms my ass. What about the freedom of people attending a wedding or receiving medical treatment not to be killed? If this was another country doing the same to the US, would your non-argument hold water?

[dang]

Would you please stop using HN for ideological arguments? It's not ok.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[riku_iki]

Wars always have casualties. Technology helps to reduce them. In WW2 it was normal to wipe whole cities using bombs.

[dragonwriter]

> Wars always have casualties. Technology helps to reduce them. In WW2 it was normal to wipe whole cities using bombs.

Large scale aerial bombardment of cities in WWII was enabled by advances in technology in the period shortly before that period, so it's really not a good thing to bring up to support a blanket “technology helps reduce them” claim about casualties.

[riku_iki]

Still I believe it is hard to ignore improvements in modern weapons precision.

[IntronExon]

Oh for sure, you can get much more bang for your buck out of a swarm of MIRV’ed ICBMs carrying megatons of hydrogen bombs than bayonets and muskets. I mean, just try ignoring intersecting blast waves and thermal pulses! And chlorine gas? Pffft, piss on your socks and you can breathe through them but try that shit with VX!

Get it?

[riku_iki]

because superpowers have ICBMs, we don't see large scale wars with 10s millions of casualties for 70 years.

[oldcynic]

Technology progresses fastest during wartime.

Without WW2 and Enigma, who knows when, or even if, computers might have developed? 20 years later, 40?

Technology of the airplane went from the first 200kts monoplanes, through to the hard limits of propeller aviation, and the birth of jets and rocketry by the end of the war.

Without the development of tacho bomb sights (eg Norden and Mk XIV), mass bombing would not have been worthwhile, as it was too inaccurate. They would lead to inertial guidance systems, enabling the ICBM.

Technology was the enabler of most of those deaths.

[MertsA]

In fairness, can you name a time in WW2 where the US government intentionally killed US citizens without regard to due process? There is supposed to be a strict separation of never using the military against the citizens of the united states. We have the national guard for a reason. Capturing those targets wasn't an objective, the government wanted them dead and it didn't afford any of those American citizens the rights laid out in the constitution.

How is that any different than murder?

[anigbrowl]

There is supposed to be a strict separation of never using the military against the citizens of the united states.

Due process and judicial process in a courtroom are not the same thing. Your citizenship isn't a bubble you carry around with you that gives you enhanced protection from your government under all circumstances; if you choose to put yourself in a kinetic theater of operations then it doesn't act as a bullet proof vest.

In the case of Al-Awlaki, his due process was people in the executive branch (specifically the National Security Council) looking at the fact that he was running around on battlefields with people the US was fighting with, and deciding that he'd chosen to become an enemy combatant. You can certainly critique the general conduct of war by states, and whether the US should be engaged in asymmetric wars in general or in that theater in particular, but I am no more or less exercised about al-Awlaki's death than I am about any of his Yemeni/Al Qaeda associates that were blown up at the same time.

Put another way, if you were OK with them being killed, then you should be OK with him being killed because he chose to affiliate with them. If you're not OK with it, then I'd say the problem is the War on Terror as a whole, since it effectively functions as a blank check to target any group that can be designated as a military threat.

[dragonwriter]

> In fairness, can you name a time in WW2 where the US government intentionally killed US citizens without regard to due process?

Not off the top of my head, but the Supreme Court decision in Ex Parte Quirin, From WWII, makes entirely clear that enemy combatants who are US citizens are not entitled to special treatment as compared to enemy combatants who are not citizens.

> There is supposed to be a strict separation of never using the military against the citizens of the united states

There is no legal or historical basis for this claim; in fact, the Constitution explicitly envisions the use of military force to suppress insurrection, which is ordinarily carried out by civilians; it is clearly intended that the government not act extrajudicially against persons (not just civilians) within the jurisdiction of the US when access to the civilians justice system is available, but enemy combatants, regardless of citizenship, at least when outside the practical reach of the US civilian justice system, don't seem to have any protection from the application of military power at any time in history.

Most of the people targeted, individually or generally, by the US military in the Civil War were US citizens, for instance.

[lotu]

Japanese internment camps? I’m sure at that scale people died that would not have.

Next given the scale of wwii I’m sure there were us citizens fighting for the axis powers. The main difference is we lacked the ability to track, research, and target individuals like we do today.

[IntronExon]

While those camps were morally reprehensible and constitutionally indefensible, the goal was not to kill people. Can we at least agree that the whole , “A secret court has ordered your death from the sky,” thing is a lot more purposefully murderous? Not capture, not detain, just kill.

[anigbrowl]

Well that's the whole problem with the War on Terror, isn't it - the designation of who's an enemy is rather unilateral. At least in Al-Awlaki's case he was advertising his ultra-militant intentions about as clearly as possible.

[anigbrowl]

Well that's the whole problem with the War on Terror, isn't it - the designation of who's an enemy is rather unilateral.

[riku_iki]

> where the US government intentionally killed US citizens without regard to due process?

alleged criminals are killed on the streets almost every day. From legal standpoint, what is difference between them and terrorists in your opinion?