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Comment by bpodgursky | Hacker News Reader

> The U.S routinely bombs other sovereign countries and this is show cased as a "hero" activity

There's a lot of nuance here, because there isn't really a (current) clear-cut case of the US bombing a sovereign nation where the government has not given the US permission. Of the current active campaigns:

- Afghanistan

- Iraq

- Pakistan

Each of these countries has a functioning government, even mostly democratically elected, and all US military involvement is with the permission of the host -- if Pakistan told the US to stop using their airbases, it would happen.

- Syria

There's less explicit permission here, but the US is bombing a current enemy of the Syrian federal government, so there's no real complaining.

- Somalia

- Yemen

- Libya

It's completely ambiguous which government you consider to be the sovereign one (arguably, there really isn't one). Either way, at least the publicly backed government is OK with US airstrikes.

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Do Afghanistan and Iraq really count given they were invaded and their governments replaced with puppet regimes? How could the governments of Iraq and Afghanistan ever afford to say 'no' to the US?

The current governments of Iraq and Afghanistan are reasonably democratically elected.

The government of Iraq did, in fact, say "no" to the presence of US troops, which is why they all left: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withdrawal_of_U.S._troops_from...

The much smaller recent bolstering of US troops in Iraq was also by invitation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American-led_intervention_in_I...

Whether or not it would be a great idea for Afghanistan to tell all UN troops to book it is a different question. But at the end of the day, they have not asked that.

I know they are, but come on... the US civil administrator ("Vice King") Paul Bremer sacked the Iraqi army and banned all Baath party members from jobs. Most publicly employed people of rank were members, that was just a necessity to keep the job.

So, you destroy the security apparatus, leave almost a million weapons trained without an income for their families and sack most competent civil administrators.

This was basically telling the Shia majority to get even with the Sunnis. 15 years later, the resentment is cemented and Isil is using it to their advantage.

Yes, technically a democracy but large parts of the populace cannot vote because they're under Sharia rule.

Thanks, Paul.

By the way, that's a war crime. An occupier has the obligation to keep order. When the military was sacked, looting became widespread. The US forces had no orders to keep the peace, but just looked on. It's a miracle Iraq works at all today.

> The current governments of Iraq and Afghanistan are reasonably democratically elected.

Not by any means. The US vetoed all candidates they didn't like. That's as un-democratic as it gets.

> There's a lot of nuance here, because there isn't really a (current) clear-cut case of the US bombing a sovereign nation where the government has not given the US permission.

That may be true, but having the permission of these governments to launch bombardments shouldn't be a moral argument.

Also, now the US should stop doing operations in Yemen. We'll see how that will go.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/07/world/middleeast/yemen-sp...

'current', for small values of current.

I can only think of one contrary example within the last decade -- Libya, where Gaddafi was still in power when we started bombing. It was complicated, and I think in the end it was a poor decision, but I don't think it's fair to consider it wrong or evil.

Looking farther back you find Iraq and Afghanistan on the list with similar disclaimers. In any case, neither was a "lob a few missiles from the stratosphere and peace out" strikes the parent comment implies.

Let me know if I'm forgetting something.

Philippines, possibly - depending on who you talk to.

https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/deadly-drone-strike-on-mu...

The US has tons of bases on the Philippines and there's a lot of training/cooperation. I can't imagine that the US didn't have permission and cooperation there, if it happened.

FWIW the Philippine military denies that it happened -- http://news.abs-cbn.com/nation/07/09/12/philippine-military-.... Which is at odds with objecting to it.

> if Pakistan told the US to stop using their airbases, it would happen.

Or the government would be replaced by more sympathetic one.

- Afghanistan

- Iraq

- Pakistan

How is this different from when the USSR bombed Afghanistan with the permission of Afghani government which the Soviets installed?

Syria: Assad complained about that in recent interview with Belgian press. It's also hard to say he's against ISIS. But anyway, he's a dictator and a paranoic who sees terrorists everywhere and can't even fathom that opposition against him may be legitimate, so his permission means nothing really.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/president-al-assad-to-belgian-m...

[I'm not endorsing this website in any way. It just was the first in the google that had a transcript of the interview.]

Assad is the President , he's extremely popular , he won the internationally observed election , hands down . If you say that Assad isn't the legitimate leader your the one spreading crap . I lived there 19 of the last 32 years .

We had elections in communist Czechslovakia too, where the party got 99% of votes, just like with Assads. Was it democratic? No. It is frankly ridiculous to say that any elections with these kinds of results are in any way meaningful expressions of popular support.

We also had forced demonstration of support for the government. Had to go into parades, etc.

The question is if you would be willing to go there now and publicly propose that Assad should not be a president, without fear of being thrown into prison?

Also what do you think of experiences of people who were tortured and killed by his subordinates for expressing dissent on facebook, or twitter, or in demonstrations?

>internationally observed election

Key words

>The question is if you would be willing to go there now and publicly propose that Assad should not be a president, without fear of being thrown into prison?

Not right now, they are in a state of civil war, I'd wait until it's over and things settle down.

just going to prison in Syria is very lenient punishment [0]

[0] www.cnn.com/2017/02/07/middleeast/syria-executions-amnesty-international-report/

"he's extremely popular"

Oh right. So what's with all those people who want him to stop being in charge so much that there's been a civil war raging for years? How popular can he be if so many people are willing to risk their lives to move him out of power? To have a civil war, he's surely got to be massively unpopular with a large segment of society.

It's not a "civil war" just because you have units of opposing factions operating in the same country. The problem with the "rebels" is that they are not considered better, I assume because of their secondary motives (fundamentalism, Sharia law, ...) [1]

Also, some of the factions seem to be heavily influenced / supported by foreign powers [2]

Taken together, every war is somewhere on a scale between "civil war" and "ordinary war" and just calling it a "civil war" doesn't mean it's necessarily one.

Of course, since war is unpopular, all interventionist democracies would like you to believe that it's a civil war and they're not meddling at all.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Aleppo_(2012%E2%80%9...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Syria#War.2C...

large segment of society you describe can still be 10% of it (random number). ie if 10% of Switzerland decided to overthrow their democratically elected government, you would have 700,000 'terrorists' immediately, most with their mandatory military weapons stored at home.

but, we speak about Switzerland. don't forget many in middle east conflicts are mercenaries or volunteers from all over the world

Assad needs to be prosecuted for war crimes against his own people.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/07/saydna...

Sure once a legitimate investigation provides proof.

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