Comment by joyeuse6701 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by joyeuse6701 | Hacker News Reader

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I wrote out something long and convoluted for this but I'll simplify it: Either wiping the 16 year old off the face of the earth without due process was justified or it wasn't.

Justification could be (for the sake of argument): serious threat to national security / several lives at stake / not feasible to apprehend physically (jurisdiction, unfriendly government etc etc.)

If upon scrutiny the reasoning behind his demise were not justified:

proper adjustments must be made and compensation and punishment doled out.

else

continue

addendum: People seemed ok with this when it was Osama, but not this guy. Seems like the method was less of an issue and it mattered much more about who it was. I agree with that sentiment.

You're ignoring the obvious justification: the strike was targeted at different Al Qaeda officials that he was traveling with: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/world/middleeast/yemeni-se... ("Airstrikes, believed to have been carried out by American drones, killed at least nine people in southern Yemen on Friday, including a senior official of the regional branch of Al Qaeda and an American, the 17-year-old son of a Qaeda official killed by the United States last month, according to the government and local reports on Saturday.").

How much of such "collateral damage" is acceptable in your opinion?

As a practical matter, the collateral damage is a lot lower with drone strikes than they were in Clinton's day when we lobbed cruise missiles at countries, or before that when we'd do targeted bombings.

"People seemed ok with this when it was Osama, but not this guy. Seems like the method was less of an issue and it mattered much more about who it was."

In the case of Osama bin Laden a team was deployed and as far as I know they have not annihilated the entire family. In this case a drone was used to wipe out a group of people. The method is therefore very different and if that boy "was not specifically targeted" (which leaves him as collateral damage) then the method is also a very poor choice.

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