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Comment by freehunter | Hacker News Reader

>Just a justification (in the eyes of US citizens) to kill them straight away.

You mean the eyes of the US government. The citizens aren't out there killing foreign nationals. Saying US citizens are responsible for extra-judicial killings is like saying Muslims are responsible for terrorist attacks. It's wrong and it's offensive.

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It may still be wrong and offensive, but at least in the case of the government it is a self policing body that in-principle answers to the US citizenry. There is no comparable (non-supernatural) relationship between all Muslims.

It's far from that simple. You should realize that the US Government does not answer directly to its citizens. This is not a corruption of the design, this is part of the design itself. The US is not a direct democracy, we are a representative democracy. We have very little control over the daily actions of our politicians, only the broad ideas they stand for.

I'm willing to bet that no one voted for President Obama specifically because he wanted to use drones to kill suspected terrorists without attempting to arrest them first. He came up with that idea on his own. Saying the US citizens are involved with that decision is, again, wrong and offensive.

I didn't say that it was simple, just that there is a relationship there (however attenuated) that's lacking in the other case.

> Saying the US citizens are involved with that decision is, again, wrong and offensive.

How's that defense working for an ISIS funder?

"Oh, I didn't send the money for bombs, I sent it for their work with children..."

I mean what I say. Majority of US citizens support drone attacks (in the polls) despite the risks. And the US is democracy, so...

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