[adamiscool8]

The title framing is weird when the report says maybe 5% of the 1250 were civilians, and the same rights group also reports more than 1500 civilians [0] killed over the same period in the horrific and rampant gang violence the government is using this technology to fight against.

[0] https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2026/country-chapters/haiti

[croes]

Since when are drone strikes the legal way to handle criminals. I remember something with trials before you can kill people.

[01100011]

That's a luxury you get when your society has reached a certain level of stability.

[gjsman-1000]

Everything is that way.

Another example: Feminism? Only happened with women in the workforce. Women in the workforce? Only when the Industrial Revolution happened and the economy could support the roles. Industrial Revolution? Only happened when farming and trading got good enough that 90% of the population didn’t need to be farmers first. Very few moral enlightenments have ever actually happened absent economic preconditions, or would not be reversed if the conditions degraded.

[watwut]

> Feminism? Only happened with women in the workforce.

That is not how it was. First, women were actually working and producing the whole time - but with much more limited options. It is not like they would twiddle thumbs bored prior industrial revolution.

And second, the politically succesfull feminism happened mostly with women who were middle class, not allowed to work and wanted more ambitious jobs.

[mmooss]

People's rights are not luxuries, but the purpose of government: "... to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men ...".

They are a necessity to achieve freedom and stability.

[HDThoreaun]

Natural rights do not exist. There is nothing natural about freedom. Every right we have we fought tirelessly for. If we forget the struggle we went through to obtain freedom we can easily abandon the cause and lose that freedom.

[mmooss]

While I mostly agree, freedom as a universal right does exist; not everyone can exercise it, but that doesn't make it less of a right.

And it is 'natural' in the sense that it is valued ~~ universally. I can't establish objectively that it is valued everywhere, of course; I can establish that people en masse have valued it and fought for it all over the world, from Europe to South Asia to SE Asia to East Asia; in Africa, to all of the Americas.

[HDThoreaun]

Well the issue here is that value is a spectrum. Having rights involves trade offs, take a look at singapore. I do not think it is in any way self evident that all people value each of their rights the way that you do. In el salvador the people gladly gave up their rights to obtain order, and now they have one of the most popular governments in the world even though they do not have very much freedom at all. For you to carte blanche say the el salvandorans are wrong to be happy with that trade off is naive and incredibly paternalistic. The same is true of the situation in Haiti.

[nchmy]

Are you at all aware of the hellscape that is Haiti...?

[mmooss]

Yes, that's all the more reason they need a real government that protects people's rights.

The anti-freedom crowd always finds an excuse to disregard others' rights, liberty, and welfare, to impose what they want to do on others. They do it in the US too.

Plenty of places like Haiti just put civilians in the battleground between two equal and equally bad sides, the military and the insurgents. Both sides give the same excuse why they maim and murder civilians, which doesn't begin to address the damage to property and welfare.

In Iraq, for example, the US finally stabilized things when they adopted an effective and acceptable anti-insurgent strategy (led by David Petraeus): Protect the population.

[jkman]

That is naive. 'they need a real government that protects people's rights' and this government will magically materialize out of thin air and institute an island paradise, right? You can't even meaningfully discuss a real 'military' in Haiti, it is a failed state with minimal control of even their capital city.

[blell]

What government? Do you know anything about Haiti?