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Comment by bluedino | Hacker News Reader

It's very easy to not agree with the way the US government handles these sort of things, but you have to give them the benefit of the doubt that they are not doing this for shits and giggles.

It might seem nationalistic to some but it reminds me of a quote from "A Few Good Men" -

Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinburg? I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago, and you curse the Marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. That Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives.

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It's very easy to not agree with the way the North Korean government handles many things, but you have to give them the benefit of the doubt that they are not doing it for shits and giggles. After all, they have been at war for over 60 years now. It must be obvious to any patriotic Korean that the danger posed by American imperialists who still occupy the southern half of the country is ever-present and growing. Someone must guard those walls.

Bravo!

These types of comments are becoming the norm on HN. Perhaps someone should write a script that can generate the reciprocal of the parent like this... it'd be a neat weekend project :d

Btw, not saying the comment is bad in anyway.

Agreed!

And maybe eventually people will actually start thinking about the opposite position before they post something.

Or maybe they actually won't.

Yes, of course. Because there is no meaningful difference between the government of the United States and that of North Korea.

The difference is getting smaller every day. That's what this is about.

The North Korean government has liberalized a bit, but let's not give them too much credit.

It's very easy to put it in terms of "Yeah, some civilian deaths are a necessary evil which we burden our conscience with. But we do it because we have to protect our civilians", but I think it's intellectually lazy.

Because the next question that should inevitably spring up is ok, ok, but why the fuck would someone in Yemen want to kill US citizens?

Once you start answering that question, the question of morality in drone strikes becomes a lot more difficult to answer.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of Al Qaeda type jihadists in Yemen who would very much like to kill U.S. citizens. Otherwise I'd agree with you that we shouldn't be there.

Yeah, my question was in the somewhat broader sense, as in "Why the hell is there an organization that wants to kill people halfway across the globe".

I think the point is that those jihadists in Yemen are the direct result of this sort of thing happening in their home towns. It's very easy to recruit someone when they just saw a whole bus of their friends and family being blown off by reasons they can't understand, from a robot in the sky, being controlled by someone miles away.

It's a whole chicken and the egg thing.

I really find this interesting.

Taken at face value, US should go and bomb with these drones a whole lot of other people too. And no, they wouldn't be "jihadists". I'm sure there is many many people in the states that very much want to kill other U.S. citizens.

Feel good nothings like this that ignore both the power and profit of the defense industry are hopelessly naive.

I also don't see how blowing away teenagers in an Afghan village who have no idea what 9/11 is, is some kind of macho statement against oppression. Pretty soon, if not already, we'll be killing young people born after 9/11. Not sure if this is the big win the GOP 'defense first' voter thinks it is. Sounds like yet another failure in policy, much like the profitable war on drugs.

When we give the nation state carte blanche on both a moral and budgetary level, expect nothing but endless abuses of power. There are 150,000 Iraqi graves that wouldn't have existed if Bush was honest. Lets not forget that. If there's a global bad guy in Nicholson's speech people should defend against, its probably the US military, and I say this as a US citizen.

saves whose lives, and why should a few of "our side" be more valuable than many of the "bad guys" (which happen to include entire families including innocent women and children)?

It should be noted as well that the entire premise of the film wasn't "the ends justify the means" but rather the exact opposite. People can do great evil while believing that every action they take is fundamentally correct and for some kind of nebulous greater good.

Unrelated, but I really hate the phrase "innocent women and children". What about the innocent men? Or the non-innocent women?

you understand that Nicholson's character in that movie was intended to illustrate the hubris and dysfunction of militarism, right? Sorkin would be amazed (actually, probably not) to see that speech being used as an actual argument...the intention was the opposite.

Eh, saves lives inside, disregards lives outside. I know it's a complicated matter, but that reasoning can't be used to justify atrocities such as this one.

"but you have to give them the benefit of the doubt that they are not doing this for shits and giggles."

Maybe you shouldn't give them the benefit of the doubt on those horrible things they are doing in your name.

Those numerous killing of civilians should require at least some questioning.

> "but you have to give them the benefit of the doubt that they are not doing this for shits and giggles."

I am very confident that I do not have to do that. How are you going to make me?

"but you have to give them the benefit of the doubt that they are not doing this for shits and giggles."

Wait, I do? Did they pass a law or something?

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