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Comment by abigail95 | Hacker News Reader

I'm not at all worried that any of my electronics are about to explode. Same reason I'm not worried my wedding will be blown up by a drone strike - I don't let terrorist infiltrate my society. If my family gets blown up because my neighbor was storing a cruise missile in his living room - he's my enemy. Not the person that blew them up.

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This didn't happen only in living rooms... this was among the civilian and non-involved populace. It happened outside their homes, inside restaurants, inside malls.

So, if someone sets off a bomb in a mall...to kill a terrorist... it's not a terrorist act?

And do these people really have the POWER to not let terrorist infiltrate their society?

That's exactly it, it could have been sitting on a coffee table with kids playing around it. Terrorists bad, governments stooping down to the same level is also bad.

> So, if someone sets off a bomb in a mall...to kill a terrorist... it's not a terrorist act?

No, by definition a terrorist act is done to cause “terror”

These were assassinations with collateral damage

If the person blowing them up takes out the entire city block that happens to include my family, then the person blowing them up is also my enemy. Your family dies as collateral damage and your reaction is "enh, they did what was necessary"? What if your wedding is blown up by drone strike because of some analyst's mistake, or choice to err on the side of "probably terrorist"?

> some analyst's mistake

You are seriously downplaying how such decisions are made.

I'm sure there's more checks and verifications and signoffs than just "Bob says go!" I'm also sure that such processes are still very fallible [0], as demonstrated by any number of friendly fire incidents over the last few decades [1], or the London Metro Police shooting a Brazilian electrician on the train [2], or the IDF shooting three Israeli hostages trying to surrender [3]. Some mistakes, some bad decisions, some practices allowed that hadn't gone wrong until now... if my innocent family is dead because of that, I'm definitely not going to excuse them because someone else started the fight. And my willingness to allow for accidents in the fog of war is going to shrink every time such accidents are repeated, or revealed to be policy rather than mistake, or just an unwillingness to do anything to avoid them.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_bombing_of_the_C...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarnak_Farm_incident

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Jean_Charles_de_Me...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Alon_Shamriz,_Yotam...

[edit: fix formatting and correcting info]

From the Zionist playbook to term any opposition to their occupation terrorism, and excuse collateral damage. Consistency further demands you support Trump who wanted to penalize families for the actions of individuals. Sorry, collective punishment is a war crime even if your bloodlust supports that.

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