Re: Sorry Cori, I respectfully disagree...
Well, thats' useful advice to the downtrodden citizens who are victims of a dictatorship. Maybe the French Resistance should have faced the German army, tanks and all, on the field of battle, just so it wouldn't be so inconvenient for Himmler to root them out?
In hiding amongst the populace, the resistance accepted there would be significantly higher French civillian casualties and collateral damage. You may or may not view that as legitimate after the fact, but that is the choice they made. Did it end the war quicker? Maybe, but definitively it ensured innocent civillians were caught up in the sweeps and fire fights.
Just as you say, everyone has their own moral code, so maybe your moral code is fine with blowing up people who may or may not be 'terrorists' (by whose definition, anyway?).
My moral code is perfectly fine with executing terrorists. I lose exactly not one seconds sleep over it.
The only definition that matters is the guy with his finger on the drones trigger. Beyond that, there are international conventions and definitions for these things. Drone strikes where civillians have been inured or killed have all occurred on battlefields where terrorists are hiding amongst the civillian population. If they allow that, or fail to leave the area, then they are accepting the risk of becoming collateral damage. Sorry, but we can't simply not shoot back - it isn't an option.
In my book, targeting people to kill them just because they have a different moral code than my own is not OK.
That's not what we're doing. We're targetting them because they are terrorists who are actively engaged in the murder of innocent civillians - those not shielding combatants of any variety for any reason.
If they do try to come to my country and blow shit up, by all means do whatever is necessary to stop them.
There are those that would argue that is precisely what we have been doing since 2001.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
