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Comment by JohnStrange | Hacker News Reader

Seconded. This sounds like a reasonable deal that probably prevented a lot of civilian deaths of people who could have been caught in the crossfire.

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But the potential price is more suicide attacks in the streets of Paris or London. Not a concern of the SDF of course (and who could blame them?), but what outcome is more desirable from a western point of view is less obvious to me.

You really think murdering women and children will lead to less suicide attacks in the future?

That kind of short-sighted inhumane idiocy is exactly what keeps fueling the whole mess!

Come on, that's a strawman - you know that. It's not like there was a briefing with two options: mass murder, or let the bad guys retreat: pick one. Nor are the causes of "the whole mess" that trivially pinpointable.

Continued fighting would have killed thousands of more civilians, while France and Great Britain have had under a thousand terrorism related deaths since 1970. How isn't this obvious?

Because we value our own citizens higher than the lives of terrorists?

The vast majority of people killed in Syria were not terrorists.

Civilians aren't terrorists, though your own citizens might be.

There will always be a potential price to pay as long a single person lives that we define as enemy or define us as enemy. This is the classical reason why nations create final solutions to a conflict. Its a choice between a bad outcome and a really bad outcome, and I doubt neither is currently desired by a western point of view.

Then maybe the west should actually check who crosses their borders instead of just waving anyone through if they come from a boat

And increase their intelligence resources and not be afraid to act on radical preachers

What makes you think the West doesn't check who crosses the borders? What do you think the dozens of thousands of people stuck in detaining centers all over Greece and Italy are waiting for?

You do realize that e.g. the US spends approximately as much on the DHS (which is primarily borders+immigration stuff) as on the FBI, CIA, NSA, DEA and FBP (federal prisons) combined? And that's the US, which through history and geography has had the luck of relatively trivial borders?

Border control is a huge focus! It's also an almost impossible task, which is not something people want to hear.

It'd be easier to claim western countries spend too much on controlling their borders simply because all that cash doesn't seem to have had the desired effect, judging by popular opinion.

How is that even remotely reasonable. You got a convoy full of terrorists leaving for safety and/or Europe. It could have been easily bombed to destruction without touching anything else. Easiest and most valuable target of the whole war. And don`t even try to answer with something like "but it was a deal, we had to stand by it". They are a bunch of psychopath terrorists, period. You don`t make deals with them unless it is temporary to screw them later.

Perhaps you're forgetting.. there were coalition war planes guiding them to safety. Which means SDF won't be able to tinker with the arrangements even if they wanted to.

Those coalition planes should be bombing them and not guiding them to safety lol

I don`t get this thread. Majority of people think that this was totally ok. I guess until next 9/11, or London, or Paris or whatever happen (hope not) and then it is again ok to bomb the country half randomly and drone strike wherever the current administration wants.

The question is whether it's acceptable to kill a bunch of innocents now (certainly the children, probably many of the women and possibly even some men) to avoid an hypothetical attack in the future. If this was just about ISIS fighters, I'd agree with you, but that's not what the report described.

Considering women innocents (I'm assuming you mean non-combatants) is pretty absurd, IMHO. As in: they're certainly aware of what they're involved in; and their participation contributes significantly to the problem, and to the degree that they're forced to stay: that probably goes for most of those present: desertion isn't something any army takes lightly.

And although the children cannot be at fault, I doubt they'll be either innocent or harmless after that childhood. To be clear, I'm not suggesting mass execution is therefore justified - but this bad situation is going to cause more bad situations in the future.

Joining an army and then being prevented from deserting is one thing, but how many of these women have had no choice in the matter since the start? Hell, how many have been outright kidnapped? Seems absurd to assume every adult there is necessarily an accomplice.

I don't get this thread either. Why the bloodlust?

Isn't it better for 100 guilty people to walk free than for 1 innocent person to be harmed? If not, when did that stop being the case?

I agree in general. But if NATO is already there and dropping bombs, this would be the least of their crimes. You can`t go to war and expect to be all butterflies and fairies.

And btw, I am against NATO interventions all around the world. My own country was bombed by NATO (Yugoslavia), I know how it is having bombs drop on your city for months where they killed thousands of civilians in the middle of Europe. But if you pretend that you want to destroy ISIS, this was the clearest target of the whole war in Syria.

And I don`t buy it that women are by default innocent. Especially this kind of woman with this background. Yes, probably some were, but more probably many also did crimes. There were armed women who were doing bad things mentioned in the same article.

I mean, I am all against any war. Against foreign interventions all over the world where they politics see fit. But I am also sick of seeing the same interventionists killing civilians time and time again and then letting this convoy pass by the excuse that there were some innocent people there maybe. They don`t stand by their logic, that's all. Anyhow, they could have organized any other type of attack using heavy ground machinery and air support when they located (by the mentioned drones) parts of the group (after the convoy split) that is 100% (or let`s say 99%) terrorist that would mitigate civilian casualties. But whatever. Not that I have high hopes for NATO doing the right thing.

I think people are more concerned about future harm these guys will cause than punishing past behavior. If out of this 100 guys 5 end up doing some suicide attacks, killing 10 people each, yeah it does rationally makes sense to go for the preventing strikes (all made up numbers).

It's the old debate between utilitarianism vs deontology.

On the flip side if these people had been murdered in cold blood and that act was used as the casus belli for 5 suicide bombers killing 10 people each it would make rational sense to let them go.

Only if those 5 suicide bombers would not have otherwise committed a similar act - it's not clear to me how the stated aim or allegiance behind such acts is related. Is that a cause? An effect? Something more complicated?

But yeah: nitpicking aside: your point is valid, as is the implied suggestion that if you follow that line of reasoning you can bend the outcome to whatever you want.

This would largely depend on whether any of the guilty are likely to harm others again when freed, wouldn't it?

History would suggest the human race says "no, it isn't"

very true, civilian loss hasn't really stopped the bombs failing since forever

Granted some of them are but attacking as you suggest would be a war crime.

And if your allies make a deal you have to stick by it even if you don't like it

I imagine that they don’t all leave at the same time? So if you blow up the first convoy, the second convoy isn’t going to leave, they will stay and fight, and then you’re back to square one.

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