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Comment by iaw | Hacker News Reader

> The question is, is a successful quelling of all terrorism worth crossing the line?

> Keep in mind the United States likely killed and harmed much more innocent bystanders with its' own allergic immune response to 9/11. It just didn't happen on our soil. We've crossed the line in the past as well.

Crossing the line while fighting terrorism was not an acceptable action by the USA but I think it's a false equivalency to compare it to forced internment, torture, and reeducation of an entire population.

At least the USA pretended to be discerning about who they went after.

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>Crossing the line while fighting terrorism was not an acceptable action by the USA but I think it's a false equivalency to compare it to forced internment, torture, and reeducation of an entire population.

I think it's a fair comparison. The amount of innocent bystanders killed by the the US military will be much more than what happens in concentration camps.

The difference is the wording. War sounds not as bad as re-education and concentration camps. This is because you're use to it. Change the word from war to slaughter, because that is what war is.. slaughter. It's not even an exaggeration... if you've ever seen a bomb or a bullet massacre a human being into a bloody mess, slaughter is a very appropriate word.

When you change the word you'll realize that war and re-education live on relatively the same level of extremism. Perhaps war is even worse than re-education or concentration camps.

The US slaughtered many soldiers and innocent bystanders in Iraq and afghanistan to end terrorism. The Chinese tortured and re-educated many people to end terrorism.

Which is worse?

I'm still going to say indiscriminately imprisoning and torturing a group of people because of their ethnic background.

The war on terror deliberately avoided slaughtering white people and american citizens. The slaughtering was kept exclusively to people with middle eastern backgrounds.

It's the same.

Not true, there was a white British woman in Syria whose child by her white British ex was killed as well

These were very very rare. The US would justify sending a cruise missile into the middle east to kill one target that MAY accidentally harm bystanders but they would never conduct such action on American soil to destroy a terrorist cell that MAY harm american citizens.

Extreme precautions were taken to make sure that all killings involved middle easterners. Were the precautions perfect? No. But obviously the killings were kept exclusive to a race.

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