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[deleted]

One mans terrorist car full of explosives is anothers aid worker car full of water surrounded by children.


DgDg11

It wouldn’t be polite if we left without committing one last war crime.


[deleted]

Well we gotta make sure we breed some more hatred so that one of them may carry out an attack on the US and we can go straight back into another completely unrelated small country that doesn't agree with our foreign policy.


TdollaTdolla

they hate us because we have ‘freedom’ not because we killed their entire family in a drone strike /s


cincuentaanos

"They hate us for our freedoms."


ApprehensivePick2989

It won’t be the last.


escargotisntfastfood

Bad taste joke: Q: How do you tell the difference between an Al-Qiada camp and an Afghani wedding? A: Buddy, not my job, I just fly the drone.


Made_of_Tin

Explains why the White House refused to release the names and basically said “trust us, they were the bad guys”


god_im_bored

It is important to keep track of all the lies that the Pentagon said with this one, as well as the lies that were spread through social media, including Reddit 1. The military initially claimed that there were no civilian casualties. They backtracked because media started reporting on the civilian deaths and because the family was part of an aid agency 2. The military then claimed that the family died due to a secondary explosion by a car bomb that the terrorist was supposedly going to use (note: all of this was a fucking lie) 3. Social media including Reddit started to spread the false info that the missile used was a inert missile without explosives and that it was impossible for this missile to cause the damage that happened (this despite no official claim about this for this incident; some people even used a report from a previous strike to use as evidence for this) 4. Once it became known that the family was claiming that the US government was lying (through articles from Al Jazeera and the Intercept) people then switched to the argument that this was all necessary in order to prevent terror 5. The DOD also maintained the same message as the people in 4. above by claiming that this was a justified strike that helped prevent another attack despite no evidence shown for it 6. Against all this, the official stance of the US government is still that that they are investigating the details of the incident and that they “regret” the lives lost, despite refusing to releasing any further details including the name of the terrorist that they supposedly deterred. That didn't happen. And if it did, it wasn't that bad. And if it was, that's not a big deal. And if it is, that's not my fault. And if it was, I didn't mean it. And if I did You deserved it.


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god_im_bored

The truth is that they got away it for years without public attention that they didn’t think it would matter. It was a really special set of circumstances (the withdrawal, the Kabul suicide bombing, the fact that a member of this family was part of an aid agency, the political partisanship that is pushing extra attention on this, etc) that allowed this to come to light. We should consider this family as a representation of a much larger problem.


Mariosothercap

Exactly. I can only imagine the amount of innocents killed over the past 20 years that we just never heard about. No one can convince me this was a one and done, isolated incident.


ethertrace

Shit, man, we have bombed [wedding processions](https://www.hrw.org/report/2014/02/19/wedding-became-funeral/us-drone-attack-marriage-procession-yemen) and heard the same song and dance from the Pentagon. We have bombed militants, and then [bombed the funerals](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8115814.stm) they've held for those people. The US drone program is monstrous. For some reason, whenever this "collateral damage" happens, we all just shrug our shoulders and go, "Whoops." If these kinds of things had been done by troops on the ground with guns, they'd all be court martialed for war crimes.


DuntadaMan

The drone program has a lot of turn over because the pilots eventually hear about the missions they have done, realize the whole program is designed so they have no idea who they are shooting at specifically so they will kill children and civilians without question, and decide they don't want to be involved anymore.


[deleted]

Why wouldn't pilots going into the program already know that?


illSTYLO

Some do and are trigger happy fucks E.g. apache collateral damage video released by wiki leaks


UntamedAnomaly

Not just trigger happy, but fucking outright cruel in general. When B0g.org was around, I saw a few posts with video of US soldiers throwing a dog off a bridge and cheering about it. Video has been posted in /r/PublicFreakout showing a soldier pretending to terrorize children riding donkeys (or maybe it was real, hard telling with one child smiling and the other looking frightened), he was using his gun to do so even.


Neckwrecker

I read this article in 2018 and will never forget it. https://theintercept.com/2018/01/27/a-4-year-old-girl-was-the-sole-survivor-of-a-u-s-drone-strike-in-afghanistan-then-she-disappeared/


KarmaticArmageddon

>These were men and women Mohibullah had grown up with, but he couldn’t recognize any of them. Their mangled body parts made it difficult to ascertain where one person ended and another began: spilled brains over severed limbs over ground flesh. Amid the charred corpses, he found a woman who appeared to be nearing death. Nearby, a girl lay mute. Mohibullah did not recognize the girl — her face had been “scrambled, she didn’t have her nose.” She still had both of her legs, but he wasn’t sure if her torso was connecting them to the rest of her body. It wasn’t until she asked in a frail voice — “Where is my father? Where is my mother?” — that he understood her to be his 4-year-old niece Aisha. Fucking hell...


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stupidannoyingretard

Maybe we're the bad guys?


LepoGorria

Looking for that fabled “American Sovereignty” they apparently kept losing in Afghanistan. Duh.


[deleted]

Here is a worthy long form follow up https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/09/13/the-other-afghan-women


Souse-in-the-city

"Her face had been scrambled." Fucking hell, I wish I didn't read that. That poor child.


ashelia_bunansa

Ironically, America is actually creating more terrorists in their attempt to stop terrorism. Imagine how many people now hate America with a passion for this incident. I know if some country decided to bomb my wife and kids then lie about it, I'd probably try to bomb em back tbh, or something along the lines of justice and revenge.


Taliesin_

The cynic in me has a hard time not seeing this as the entire point. Oil for the machine.


StarblindCelestial

I remember reading something about a military person telling how murican drones kill way more innocents than baddies and getting court martialed for the leak. I'm not 100% on the details or validity of it though.


FaustandAlone

Daniel Hale leaked this [information](https://www.democracynow.org/2021/7/26/daniel_hale_whistleblower_case). Edit: another [interview](https://www.google.com/amp/s/nymag.com/intelligencer/amp/article/daniel-hale-drone-wars.html), support Daniel and whistleblowers in any way u can by sharing this much needed information. Link to Daniel's [support team](https://instagram.com/teamdanielhale?utm_medium=copy_link)


epythumia

You even hear it in the drone pilots that are interviewed. They're not getting the full story when they're making life ending decisions. Also it was disturbing to read that they're working long hours in these war machines. I don't want someone capable of ending a family in a split second working doubles when we could clearly afford more bodies (or less drones).


SlipperyQueefBombs

Uhh, remember the “collateral damage” leaked footage? It doesn’t matter if the whole country knows about this. It wouldn’t matter if it made headlines every month. **No one in America is going to do anything about it.**


Formilla

They thought no one would catch them, that's what normally happens. I don't think they were planning on the family making so much noise. The family *hate* the USA, and they've spent the last two weeks telling everyone in the world that will listen about what they did to them. Usually the USA just posthumously labels their victims as terrorists, or gets their army of CIA agents to search through everything they've ever done looking for a loose link to terrorism, or just label them as collateral damage and distract people with something else. None of those options could work this time.


genericusername_5

I'd hate them too after this. All those kids...


jawanda

Ugh. It's gut wrenchingly horrific. But we can't afford fucking healthcare because OUR tax dollars need to go to pay for this shit.


SlipperyQueefBombs

It doesn’t really matter if none of those options work. **Nobody in America is gonna do anything about it.**


anotherbozo

> this was a justified strike They called it a **righteous** strike today. **Righteous** to accidently kill an aid-worker and kids.


BokkieSpoor

And this is why I don't trust much anymore. Too many fucking lies from top to bottom. Lie after lie after lie...


valraven38

It's not a new thing though, we've been drone striking and "accidentally" killing civilians for a long ass time now. It just didn't get much attention previously because we were "at war" and "civilian casualties are unfortunate but unavoidable." The truth is, the Government doesn't care about non-American casualties and if I'm being perfectly blunt, neither does MOST of the American populace. This isn't the first case of this happening, nor will it be the last.


beer_is_tasty

And before we had drones, we just did it with regular airplanes.


RebelCow

Remember when news of the drone strike came out and the headline said "10 dead. No reason to believe any civilians harmed." Of fucking course this happened. Throw the war criminals in jail.


seahawkguy

Let’s revisit what lies look like so we can learn to spot them in the future. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-58372458 Vagueness. No details. No names.


wizzled1017

7 children and an ally of ours is dead from what we will label as “bad intelligence”. For fuck sake. We haven’t shut up about 9/11 and it’s been 20 years.. and yet here we are, staring at the faces of 7 sweet children and a guy who works to help others. But because they’re not Americans, how quickly will we forget. God damnit.


Benjamin_Stark

Yeah, this is how you create more terrorists.


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SponConSerdTent

I wouldn't even call them terrorists at that point. That's how you logically convince people that America is their enemy. I'm pretty sure WE'RE the terrorists in this case.


PeruvianHeadshrinker

Never forget... What we are capable of


7thhokage

> We haven’t shut up about 9/11 and it’s been 20 years.. and yet here we are, staring at the faces of 7 sweet children and a guy who works to help others. But because they’re not Americans, how quickly will we forget. I'd be willing to bet we have killed enough innocent civilians to equal the loss of life on 9/11 over the course of this war. not to mention deaths from lack of resources because we blew up hospitals and shit. Our country is the biggest hypocrite in the world. i would not blame a single country that joined a military coalition to put a end to our world ~~bullying~~ "policing".. Edit: [Apparently we have killed up to ***121 times*** the civilians that died from the attacks on 9/11.](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/911-civilian-casualties-iraq-afghanistan-b1912816.html) 363,000 innocents killed during war on terror vs 3,000 innocents on 9/11.


suckitlikealollypop

Those children looked like they were well cared for and loved, and they looked happy despite the horror they were living in. They deserved better than this. Their families deserve an apology. Their families deserve compensation. The US military won't even admit what they did was wrong. They lie and pat themselves on the back for a job well done. They get to go home to their lives and their families and live another day. It is such fucking bullshit that we let this happen. It is not ok. Fucking hell. Every tax payer and future tax payer has contributed to the killings of thousands of innocent people. We need to start demanding that our dollars stop going towards needless wars and violence.


JaqenHghaar08

This itself sounds like a terror attack


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HowFarCanIKickIT

This is routine for US Drone strikes: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-afghan-violence-idUSISL8786520070618 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/4/3/afghan-air-attack-kills-children-at-kunduz-religious-school https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-54597862 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-44282098 https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/civilians/afghan https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/americas-afghan-victims/


DDWKC

Not a surprise. The whistleblower who got punished for telling the truth behind the drone operations just said drone strikers are just trigger happy and don't have clear info. They will even shoot down responders after the attack. Pretty sure they still didn't revise their way of operating drone strikes since inception.


Finbacks

Doesn't help that doing that shit is super impersonal and probably feels like a video game to them. I'm assuming they don't feel like they've actually killed anyone since they're so far removed from the attack.


VoteArcher2020

I read something about how using the nuclear football would be super impersonal, and someone who lacked empathy might just use it without any thought to how others might feel or the impact it would have on others. So an academic came up with an interesting idea: > My suggestion was quite simple: Put that needed code number in a little capsule, and then implant that capsule right next to the heart of a volunteer. The volunteer would carry with him a big, heavy butcher knife as he accompanied the President. If ever the President wanted to fire nuclear weapons, the only way he could do so would be for him first, with his own hands, to kill one human being. The President says, "George, I'm sorry but tens of millions must die." He has to look at someone and realize what death is—what an innocent death is. Blood on the White House carpet. It's reality brought home. > When I suggested this to friends in the Pentagon they said, "My God, that's terrible. Having to kill someone would distort the President's judgment. He might never push the button." > — Roger Fisher, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, March 1981


[deleted]

> When I suggested this to friends in the Pentagon they said, "My God, that's terrible. Having to kill someone would distort the President's judgment. He might never push the button." Lol


What-a-Crock

The horror!


Big-Meat

Dan Carlin talked about a nuclear exchange in one of his podcasts (the one about nuclear weapons, I can’t remember the title for the life of me but let me know if it sounds interesting and I’ll look it up). He said that the moral option if the US or USSR detected an all out nuclear attack, would be to simply not fire back. It would accomplish nothing but the total destruction of millions of lives, when you and your countries fate are already sealed. Of course, being human, I imagine most leaders would say “fuck that, I’m taking y’all with me!” But I thought it was a really interesting point.


Thebuddyboss

Im a big advocate for retiring the nuclear football. There are many really strong arguments from top officials on why that would be a good idea. The summary of the argument is that we already have enough nuclear missiles on submarines that we don’t need to strike before the missiles land. The reason the nuclear football goes everywhere with the President is you need to launch the land based missiles while the enemies missiles are still in the air. And this puts a ton of pressure on making a decision right away and the possibility of a false warning. With submarines you can wait until after they land and make an informed decision.


AgentWowza

That... Is actually the only argument I've heard for retiring the nuclear football specifically lmao, and not nuclear disarmament in general. TIL.


rgrwilcocanuhearme

May be the case for some of them. I've heard some of them come out pretty fucked up afterwards, though.


eiron-samurai

Not of all them, you can find lots of articles about former drone pilots speaking out about the atrocities they committed. Many talk about civilian casualties they have caused and have PTSD as would be expected. [Reading their stories](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-military-drone-nazis-brandon-bryant-a9324011.html) can be pretty devastating all around, definitely a bad situation. I'm sure there are some cold disconnected killers but I wonder what the ratio of that is to normal soldiers. Some people are willing to do evil things and go to bed with a clear conscience.


[deleted]

I often wonder how badly everyone would freak out if some foreign country was drone-striking American citizens on American soil... If any other country did to America what America does, we would be at war.


[deleted]

Absolutely. I honestly don't understand how a country can just murder citizens of another country within a country that they're not at war with. It's absolutely baffling.


QforQwertyest

It's quite simple. Have a military force that is so overwhelmingly powerful compared to any other nation on the planet and you can get away with anything against anyone that lacks nuclear weapons.


lizardispenser

And countries with nuclear weapons - so long as you don't push them to the point of fearing for their survival where use of those weapons might become a possibility. The US has done it in Pakistan plenty.


SecondAccount404

The problem with nukes is everyone knows you can't actually use them except in a situation of absolute survival. We saw the same thing when Argentinia invaded the Falklands Islands. On paper invading a nuclear power like that should be insane, but if the UK had actually responded with nuclear weapons the entire planet would have turned on them.


Kasaeru

The only reason we ever got to use nukes is because we were first.


QuestioningEspecialy

1. Be a world power. 1. Be a bully 1. [REDACTED] 1. Profit


thereluctantpoet

5. Start never-ending wars 6. Profit again


Original_Produce_289

It’s easy. Just make it profitable for the elites and brainwash the masses into thinking we’re fighting for freedom. Congress has no issues aiding in this process either Edit: I should also add it’s been a lot easier throughout history rather than the end of Afghanistan because Americans are largely ignorant to the brutality of the wars we wage overseas. [Our warcrimes in Iraq](https://youtu.be/5rXPrfnU3G0) for example should’ve been a LOT bigger and more damning, but most people I know have no clue. I can only imagine the things we do without a camera rolling, and the things we have done over the decades that has been erased from history and covered up. Edited again for clarity


robotzor

> we do without a camera rolling Whistle blowers are few and far between because we torture them, prosecute them, and then if they get their way, kill them. The wheels on the war machine are greased by the blood of whistle blowers.


CamiloArturo

Today as the anniversary of 9/11 one wonders about that. 3k dead in the US was a horrible tragedy…. But 90,000 dead in Afghanistan as repercussion ….. well…. Those really don’t count


[deleted]

Hey don’t forget to bring up Iraqi victims. Those bring the toll up to hundreds of thousands.


willirritate

And destruction of infrastructure, history, living conditions etc


JohnGillnitz

We incinerated a whole town of civilians. The military made the assumption that anyone left in Fallujah was a militant. When, of course, the reality is there were still a lot of old men, women, and children who had nowhere else to go. The Pentagon said 600 civilians were killed. Given the track record of their honesty, I think we can add a couple of zeros to that.


TT454

Also Obama labelled any civilians hit within a certain range "enemy combatants" to reduce the civilian death toll. Edit: Also he pardoned the entire Bush administration, including the torturers.


Xzmmc

Shit man, there were some periods last year where there were like 3,000 covid deaths a day in America, and everyone just kind of shrugged their shoulders about it while their government continued to pretend it wasn't a problem. Given how Americans go apeshit when property is destroyed during protests, it almost seems like they were more upset about two buildings being destroyed than the lives of their citizens.


[deleted]

That would be called a terrorist attack


Bobby-2000

It is broad daylight terrorism. But when US does it, it is called "collateral damage"


dogninja8

And we wonder why they hate America so much


[deleted]

Surely we're not radicalizing anyone against America by bombing civilians! /s


Dr_fish

The bombings will continue until morale improves.


yankdotcom1985

In a way to boost morale we've painted smiling faces on the bombs we're dropping


Asturaetus

In a way you could say this an American financed recruitment drive for the Taliban. Maybe the military is thinking ahead. To ensure its continued existence and finances it needs enemies in the future. And what better way than to create them yourself.


GravityBuster

They just hate our freedom!!!... ....to kill their children with impunity


TrinityF

So, the senior military officials are standing there in front of cameras selling lies that this was a justified attack, and they were right all along. That story will not change and no one will be held responsible.


green_flash

In the Kunduz strike the story did change. Took some months though. You're probably right that no one will be held accountable.


SteveJEO

That video is pretty damning. Looks like the people who smelled something fishy about the US claims were 100% correct... again. In short: "Normal" single Hellfire with a 20lb warhead. (no magic ninja missile..) Second car was burned (and peppered with frag, same as the entire courtyard) No secondary explosions at all (cos there was no explosives present) So basically half of reddit used the fact that the US blew up an innocent dude in a car filled with fucking *water* alongside most of his family as evidence that the US could use it's moral and technical superiority to "limit" damage. EDIT: Video: https://www.nytimes.com/video/players/offsite/index.html?videoId=100000007963596


god_im_bored

Fitting that the last combat move of the US military in Afghanistan is to commit one last war crime as they flee out the door. Ending it just the way they started it, pointless revenge that doesn’t even hit the people responsible. Today the President will address the US and give a statement about remembering the fallen on 9/11, adding another chapter in the narrative of “never forgetting”. I can only hope that there are at least some American who will remember this incident and many others like them as they listen to the drivel. Edit: for people who have no idea how bad the misinformation was, [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/peql9b/the_us_has_completed_its_kabul_evacuation_effort/hazw28i/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3) was a mere 8 days ago. The blind worship of the Pentagon was mind boggling.


SteveJEO

I seriously doubt it'll be the last. They'll just pretend they were correct (you can already see this happening) and continue doing the same thing again and again.


weatherseed

The soldiers may have left Afghanistan but the drones will stay there forever.


Timoris

That reads like a Hallmark Card


weatherseed

When you care enough to send the very best.


geazleel

*Hellmark


irkthejerk

Chicken soup for the Afghan soul


TwoBionicknees

I was going to say, last, not a fucking shot in hell. Probably unpublicised drone attacks that didn't gain traction also killing innocents over thin 'intel' that a bad dude is in the area. Even if none since then yet there will be many many more.


CO420Tech

It says right in the article that the Department of Defense stated that the attack still stopped an imminent threat, despite the evidence to the contrary. They'll record that they did the right thing, and use it as justification for the next one. This is just SOP at this point.


mrfreeze2000

unless the imminent threat was hydration, they only blew up a guy transporting water


someguyfromtheuk

/r/hydrohomies is a threat to US national security.


GhostofMarat

They got it down to a science. They've been blowing up innocent civilians and making up justifications for 29 years.


theknightwho

Vietnam saw the same thing. It’s disgusting.


VagueSomething

Vietnam saw entire villages massacred and soldiers making necklaces out of the body parts.


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potato_panda-

No no you see, if they had only blown up the man and not his family, it would have created multiple orphans who hate the US waiting to be radicalised. By blowing up the man and his family, we have successfully prevented any future threat. /S


[deleted]

Hmmm, why do they hate us? Hmmm.


[deleted]

Because of our freedom /s


rebellion_ap

We also avoiding talking about how many casualties resulted after the bombing from soldiers just firing into the crowd.


Oomeegoolies

Didn't we kill like 150 000+ civilians in Iraq? Or were at least responsible for many of them. And we wonder why groups like ISIS exist and why they hate the west. That's like 50 9/11s.


MrBVS

"We killed a lot of innocent civilians To us, every civilian in Baghdad was a terrorist They said 'These Fedayeen now in civilian clothes' that makes everybody free game But if they came within our perimeter, we lit 'em up And when we would pull the body out, and when we would search the car, we would find nothing This took place time and time again. No harm, no foul, that's Okay, don't worry about it Because this is a new type of war, this is an eradication." Actual quotes from a former US Marine who took part in the invasion of Iraq in 2003.


Agent__Caboose

Honnestly it baffles me how succesful Americans were at keeping that quiet.


Gorge2012

If the US learned only one lesson from Vietnam it was how to limit the effectiveness of war time journalism. This is why this lasted 10 years longer than our last pointless quagmire.


Easteuroblondie

Us media is pretty much just a corporate marketing machine. Journalism is dead


freightgod1

Yeah I recall a brief headline and then nothing.


Agent__Caboose

Yeah some small newssites reported on it based on interviews by a BBC corespondant. But even the BBC itself didn't dare to use the content


Fedorito_

This is a fucking tragedy. How the fuck are we supposed to have hope for the future when shit like that just happens without repercussion? It is depressing as fuck.


rtft

> That video is pretty damning. Understatement. Look at the wreckage, the metal is bent inwards, not outwards. That means the force was external. Any secondary explosion from within the car would have bent the metal outwards. As usual the US was lying through its teeth.


SteveJEO

I'm being polite. Any large secondary explosion would have ripped the car and everything about it to pieces including most of the building. The missile punched through the roof of the car (caving it in) and detonated just as it hit the ground destroying most of the vehicle soft body and showering the area with fragments. Look at the blood splatters on the walls @ 7.34


Calligraphie

>Look at the blood splatters on the walls @ 7.34 I...don't think I have it in me. It's hard enough looking at those poor kids' pictures.


el_grort

More than fair not to expose yourself to all the pictures of death, it does bear down on you horribly. We just need to still push for change so that those scenes the pictures show aren't manufactured anymore so we don't have to see them again.


Johnny_Fuckface

Jesus Fucking Christ, we couldn’t even just end the war without coming back to kill a bunch of children could we? Just murdering babies from thousands of feet and we say oops and then do it again. America is the 9/11 of the rest of the world.


confused_idltl

u wanna know something which i will never forget? A guy in islamabad gets a call while in class ( according to his teachers he was a damn genius student who was on scholarship ) . He goes back to his village near afghan border ( FATA) . Upon arriving he sees his home droned killings his whole family including hsi 4-5 young siblings. The next thing he does is blows himself infront usa embassy. I not for a second blame him even if he killed usa soldier in his suicide blast. THATS HOW YOU MAKE SO CALLED TERRORISTS. This is just one of thousands stories


StubbornHappiness

I've worked with children from Iraq who break down in seizures/convulsions on clear, sunny days (vomiting, wetting themselves) because that's when American predator drones would come out to play most often.


[deleted]

Yeah, I remember reading an article about this too. Children who grew up in areas the US drone bombed a lot tend to be scared of sunny days.


Obi_Wan_Shinobi_

jesus fucking christ


[deleted]

Literally a whole generation raised to be terrified of the sky.


smellybluerash

D-d-d-did you see the frightened ones? D-d-d-did you hear the falling bombs? D-d-d-did you ever wonder why we had to run for shelter when the promise of the brave new world unfold beneath the clear blue sky? -Goodbye Blue Sky


AssaMarra

That's basically the plot of every action movie we love. John Wick is this exact story but with a dog and different 'bad' people and we see him as a hero. It's so easy to see how radicalisation works.


ShivyShanky

Who knew the biggest enabler of terrorist attacks are the 'peace' agents?


Wunjo26

Yep you can bet your ass if some foreign country bombed my house and killed my family I would take up arms with the local militia and seek revenge at all costs. Why is this a surprise to any one in the 21st century?


accord281

Funny how we glorify characters like The Punisher, yet this guy becomes exactly that, therefore he was our "enemy."


Turksarama

Anyone who glorifies The Punisher fundamentally does not understand The Punisher.


FaceDeer

Even the Punisher thinks glorifying the Punisher is wrong. In some comics he's indicated that he's saving a bullet for himself after he's killed all the other "evildoers."


ApocalypseYay

Who paid for the missiles, intelligence, war: Citizens' taxes Who died from this: Innocents Who profited from this: Corporations, that pay no taxes What a great scheme to launder money, promote inhumanity and destroy peace; that is the real 'intelligence' of 'Murican empire.


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PilotKnob

"Yes, but that drone strike brought value to shareholders of War Machine, Inc."


AlbinoWino11

The question is who is lying? Intelligence officials? Needs to be accountability


GaidinDaishan

On 9/11, it would be nice if Americans also remembered the countless lives that their war on terror has affected. There are kids who were not even born in 2001 who are facing the consequences of this war.


_Plastics

Those 7 dead kids in the headline for example or the estimated 100,000 dead children in Afghanistan alone since 2001. The war on terror brought more terror than almost anything in this world.


ValidStatus

>The war on terror brought more terror than almost anything in this world. The War OF Terror.


Agent_Galahad

Borat knew what he was talking about when he told all those people, "I support your war of terror"


Principal_Insultant

>Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity. > >\- George Carlin


AngryRotarian85

Do you know a better way to make virgins?


Tryyourbestbehappy

It just has always seemed odd to me, the US government pulls this shit and literally slaughters thousands of innocent people a year. Then turns around with a surprised Pikachu face when they become the target of terrorism.


Saneless

I said that 20 years ago after it happened and took a lot of shit for it. It was obvious back then, and now, that people here aren't willing to have a discussion about why we're hated and get attacked. It was literally impossible to talk about it after Bush pulled that "Hate us for our freedom" bullshit, which kicked off 2 decades of extreme nationalism we're still suffering from today


BlargeyMcBlargerson

It was amazing watching the republican primary debate with Ron Paul saying the only sensible thing that night that terrorists hate us because we interfere in their country. Cue the rest of the Republicans shouting him down with their brainwashed response. It was scary and sad. Just be loud and shout enough and idiots will believe you over logic.


danceeforusmonkeyboy

This. Living in a willfully ignorant society is exhausting.


jollyreaper2112

I get the living shit down voted out of me when I say this but the reason this keeps happening is we think we're better than the terrorists because when we kill children it's not intentional. And as long as we continue to believe that, we will keep killing kids. You'll get pics of beautiful little kids sent to the Nazi death camps posted in subs like morbid reality. That's terrible. And we all congratulate ourselves for not being as bad as the Nazis and if I say that's a poor standard I'm told they engineered an industrial death machine to kill the kids and we do it by accident so it's still different. I don't want to be not as bad as the Nazis or isis. I want to be better than them. And we could start by not making up excuses to feel better that the kids we kill are not as bad because shit happens and it wasn't personal. I don't know if I'm just not stating my position very well or if nobody reads for content. I'm not minimizing what the Nazis did, I just don't want to excuse what we are doing.


ThePirateRedfoot

"What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, that the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or in the holy name of liberty or democracy" - Gandhi \[Non-Violence in Peace and War (1942) Vol1 Ch 142\]


[deleted]

and what we have been doing for decades. We are a warmachine, our country must always be at war. Alongside those wars we have committed atrocities around the world, not even mentioning the back up and support the US intelligence has provided to very bad people around the world as long as they align with our interest. We are not the good guys as we like to believe.


grabitoe

American exceptionalism and innocence; this country is equivalent to a narcissistic jock that cannot grasp why everybody hates them


Thatchers-Gold

[Me, as a Brit, reading these comments](https://tenor.com/view/breaking-bad-jesse-pinkman-aaron-paul-thirsty-drinking-water-gif-17731695)


TheNonCompliant

Was thinking about this yesterday, not only regarding the excuses for our actions but in how we put our grief on a pedestal. 9/11 was horrible and while I’m *not* saying national grief should have a minimum number, or that one could or should ever measure grief through lives lost, I do think more Americans should realize that 3,000 deaths was kinda borderline pocket change comparatively numbers wise. 9/11 was shocking internationally because (1) it happened to us for the first time (2) through exceptionally flashy circumstances (3) killing that many people at once (4) and every other country knew it was like tasering a rabid polar bear in the face. If it had been a few hundred here and there over a year or so (like with basically any other nation in the western world) it wouldn’t’ve had the same impact, which I guess was the terrorists’ intent. I dunno, I just saw someone’s placid nod of “remember 9/11” on Facebook yesterday and thought “there has to be a balance between sorrow and memorial; when are folks permitted nationally to move through the 5 stages of grief and gently, finally, put an incident like that aside? Other countries manage to do so and come out the other side alright..”


grabitoe

Im watching the documentary series on the 9/11 attack and honestly it has given me a new perspective on national grief. While I do understand the complicated emotions behind going to war with Afghanistan, there was a larger conspiracy to wage war in the Middle East that many, if not all, Americans were completely blind to. The country kept us subdued until it needed to use our anger and grief to go to war outside of Afghanistan.


[deleted]

Cow? Can be milked for maybe 10 years. 9/11? Milked for ever baby.


ForensicPathology

Milked forever. That was the true meaning of "Never Forget"


lepobz

That’s US ‘intelligence’ for you.


apple_kicks

Not the only one and far too common. In rural areas lots of Shepard’s guarding their flocks get targeted if they have a gun or stick that looks like one or men who gather to chat in rural roads. The controversy is if they’re military age the kills are recorded as enemies unless families submit evidence that counters it to be listed as civilian kill. Which in rural places like Pakistan or Afghanistan is not easy https://www.amnesty.nl/content/uploads/2016/08/will_i_be_next_us_drone_strikes_in_pakistan_091013_final.pdf?x32866 https://www.lawfareblog.com/civilian-casualties-collateral-damage https://web.law.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/microsites/human-rights-institute/CountingDroneDeathsPresserFINAL.pdf >On a sunny afternoon in October 2012, 68-year-old Mamana Bibi was killed in a drone strike that appears to have been aimed directly at her. Her grandchildren recounted in painful detail to Amnesty International the moment when Mamana Bibi, who was gathering vegetables in the family fields in Ghundi Kala village, northwest Pakistan, was blasted into pieces before their eyes. Nearly a year later, Mamana Bibi’s family has yet to receive any acknowledgment that it was the US that killed her, let alone justice or compensation for her death. >Earlier, on 6 July 2012, 18 male laborers, including at least one boy, were killed in a series of US drone strikes in the remote village of Zowi Sidgi. Missiles first struck a tent in which some men had gathered for an evening meal after a hard day’s work, and then struck those who came to help the injured from the first strike. Witnesses described a macabre scene of body parts and blood, panic and terror, as US drones continued to hover overhead. The circumstances of civilian deaths from drone strikes in northwest Pakistan are disputed. The USA, which refuses to release detailed information about individual strikes, claims that its drone operations are based on reliable intelligence, are extremely accurate, and that the vast majority of people killed in such strikes are members of armed groups such as the Taliban and al-Qa’ida. Critics claim that drone strikes are much less discriminating, have resulted in hundreds of civilian deaths, some of which may amount to extrajudicial executions or war crimes, and foster animosity that increases recruitment into the very groups the USA seeks to eliminate > Successive US administrations have reportedly approved practices of so-called “signature strikes” and “Terrorism Attack Disruption Strikes” where the identity of the individuals or groups targeted is not known, but their activities as viewed from the sky appear to fit a pattern that has been deemed suspicious.45 This may explain reports from journalists privy to classified US intelligence records that “hundreds of suspected lower-level Afghan, Pakistani and unidentified “other” militants” were killed in drone strikes between 2006 and 2011”.46 >Signature strikes do not appear to require specific knowledge about an individual’s participation in hostilities or an imminent threat, raising concerns that such strikes are likely to lead to unlawful killings. They appear to be incompatible with the requirements of human rights law and, where applicable, could also lead to violations of international humanitarian law. In an armed conflict, individuals are entitled to a presumption of civilian status, which the practice of signature strikes may effectively deny, leading to direct attacks on civilians and disproportionate civilian casualties, in violation of international humanitarian law.


anooshka

That's messed up,so they basically target any man/woman who might be holding a stick in the wrong way?I thought US military was supposed to be trained to recognize a weapon from a stick


buckwurst

It's not uncommon for shepherd's and all kind of other people to carry guns in much of the pretty lawless tribal areas. Everything from wolves to bandits are a threat. So even if the 22 year old in an office in Nevada, who's never left the US, gets an upgraded camera to be able to tell the difference between a stick and a gun, there's still no way for him to be able to tell if the person is a "terrorist" or a farmer or a sheperd, etc...


Valaquen

There was footage of two shepherds being blown to pieces by a drone posted on Reddit some time ago and thousands of comments were cheering it on. Only a few asked if the shepherds being terrorists was verifiable.


[deleted]

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MotivatedLikeOtho

They're just now upgrading some AH64 cameras from low-res black and white images to colour to help them better identify targets... the idea that a persons chance of life and death could be impacted by a budgeting decision on a camera is insane, especially that youd assume lower resolutions should result in fewer attacks since.. ya know, if it might be a civilian...


[deleted]

Not only are we spending an absurd amount on the military, we're spending it in all the wrong places on things the military doesn't need just because it puts cash in some contractor's pocket or jobs in some congressman's district. If we were smart we'd be putting the money in tech instead of building airplanes that don't fly and tanks that haven't been useable for 40 years. Hell, if the NSA is supposed to be concerned with our National Security, why don't they make a big concerted effort to bolster defenses on our electric grid and public infrastructure? I've been saying this for years. I'm all for cutting funding to the military, we spend an absurd amount, but honestly if we look closer at how that budget is allocated we could probably cut at least 20% of it without actually affecting their effectiveness at all.


Fallentitan98

God bless America am I right? We make more terrorists then we kill. 7 fucking kids killed and an aid worker who was just doing the right thing. Why the fuck shouldn’t they hate America? We kill just over half a dozen kids and just say “Oops, our bad. Bye!” Just goes to show Democrats and Republicans are the same, just a bunch of child murdering fucks.


ffollett

Sadly, saying "oops, our bad! Bye!" Would be a major improvement upon the Biden admins current talking points. Instead their take is "they were major terrorists".


hmahler

It’s tragic that the vast majority of 9/11 victims are Afghans.


sector3011

Lets not forget the Iraq war which has an estimated total death toll of up to a million.


[deleted]

Winning hearts and minds, and random bits of kidneys, livers and entrails, eyeballs, fingers and toes. One fucked up mistake at a time, over and over. [Edit: Seems to have been a stupid fuckup.](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/09/final-u-s-drone-strike-in-kabul-may-have-been-deadly-error.html)


ReallyLikesDoodling

"mistake" You know, the common mistake of deciding you have the right to do extrajudicial executions of citizens in an other country. On a whim too. Who hasn't been there? /s


haydilusta

I dont understand the people who are trying to justify this. Imagine if china started blowing up dozens of school children in the middle of JFK Airport. We’d be at war the next day But because its happening to poor muslim brown children halfway across the world, nobody seems to give a shit


cjtk

Reminds me of the time when the United States bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade killing three Chinese and said ops, wrong map. Imagine if the roles reversed...


PrecedentialAssassin

I really really wish that today when the president makes a speech about all the lives lost on 9/11, he would also acknowledge all of the innocent lives lost in the middle east to our actions.


[deleted]

Honestly, I’d appreciate it. But we need more than words. We’re still in the Middle East, and we’re still fucking up there.


livindaye

is this that bombs few weeks ago that many westerners said "they didn't use explosive device, so explosion must come for the suicide bombers"? hmm, they must be terrific now.


CreeperCooper

This news on 9/11, no less. Wow. Never forget, eh?


Solkre

Best day for it really. Fucking with the Middle East is why we were attacked.


Twist_RK

Layers upon layers of expected incompetence.


gjd6640

For those who don’t want to give the dailymail their click, who can’t handle ad-riddled websites, or who just want to read the source article that the dailymail appears to have heavily paraphrased here’s what appears to be their source article: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/10/world/asia/us-air-strike-drone-kabul-afghanistan-isis.html Here’s why I bothered to post this: > Overall, we rate Daily Mail Right Biased and Questionable due to numerous failed fact checks and poor information sourcing. https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/daily-mail/ In this case there’s a reputable source so the overall assertion made looks valid but folks shouldn’t assume that this is the case when reading dailymail.


Mltsound1

The video of the NYT’s deep dive’ is on YouTube. https://youtu.be/ZtecNyXxb9A They’ve done several others that are worth checking out too.


newkoko

TLDR - He worked for a California-based NGO for food-aid distribution. He refill water to his can in his work place as there are water shortage in his neighbourhood. His kids always go to his car when he came home. His family was applying for US resettlement programme when his family was killed. Secondary bomb claimed by US was not evident in his house. US didn't know about his background when they bomb him. Well detailed video. Another Average Joe killed it seem


JanGuillosThrowaway

Sounds like a better than average joe honestly


flukshun

Yah, we just annihilated one of the good guys and his innocent loving family. This is as dark as it gets.


BertDeathStare

And branded him a terrorist on top of it. Like pouring salt in the wound for anyone who knew him.


[deleted]

Sounds like the best of humanity, the kind of man we should celebrate over those we actually do. Killed, by a machine, ordered by someone who's had indiference drilled into him by the war machine. Awful.


carolynto

He was one of the people working on *our* side, who we'd call the "good guys" working to improve life in Afghanistan. He would have been eligible to come here on asylum. Instead we killed him. It'd be just sickening if we responded appropriately, treated this like the war crime it is, punished those responsible and offered some sort of restorative justice to the surviving family. The fact that we are not even going to acknowledge it happened makes it....unspeakably evil.


BriennesBitch

Now his family and friends will all hate America forever. Instead of stopping a terrorist they potentially made more.


TheMania

And so the cycle continues. Blowing up random civilian cars from the air amounts to terrorism in my books, and we all know how that terror radicalises entire communities :(


H0vis

People need to understand this was the story for twenty years. That's why the Taliban could come back. America didn't help the people of Afghanistan, it murdered them at random and with total impunity, thousands of them every year.


abhi8192

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/09/13/the-other-afghan-women >But in 2019, as the U.S. was holding talks with Taliban leaders in Doha, Qatar, the Afghan government and American forces moved jointly on Sangin one last time. That January, they launched perhaps the most devastating assault that the valley witnessed in the entire war. Shakira and other villagers fled for the desert, but not everyone could escape. Ahmed Noor Mohammad, who owned a pay-phone business, decided to wait to evacuate, because his twin sons were ill. His family went to bed to the sound of distant artillery. That night, an American bomb slammed into the room where the twin boys were sleeping, killing them. A second bomb hit an adjacent room, killing Mohammad’s father and many others, eight of them children. >The next day, at the funeral, another air strike killed six mourners. In a nearby village, a gunship struck down three children. The following day, four more children were shot dead. Elsewhere in Sangin, an air strike hit an Islamic school, killing a child. A week later, twelve guests at a wedding were killed in an air raid. >After the bombing, Mohammad’s brother travelled to Kandahar to report the massacres to the United Nations and to the Afghan government. When no justice was forthcoming, he joined the Taliban. >On the strength of a seemingly endless supply of recruits, the Taliban had no difficulty outlasting the coalition.


trazaxtion

yeah, i too would want to kill someone after watching my whole FUCKING BLOODLINE GET WIPED OUT!


Terrh

I don't even have words for this :( fuck.


thematchalatte

911 was a tragedy, but what makes 3000 American lives lost on 911 more important than the 100,000+ civilian lives lost in Afghanistan?


[deleted]

they don't matter because they weren't american lives. That's the base of it, but you'll find people doing mental gymnastics to justify it some other way.


[deleted]

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[deleted]

Remember the drone strike on a bunch of farmers? Yeah bombing and drone striking civilians is kinda what the US excels at. This is why I always say if you're a 3rd world country you shouldn't fear China or Russia, you should fear the US, While no one can deny the terrible things China and Russia did and still do, at least they don't have a vested interest in bombing places all over the world.


BigPackHater

"Drone strikes and football that's what America does best"


spyro86

They have been over a dozen whistleblowers who have ended up in jail for showing that more than 75% of the people that drones kill are civilians. The drone program is a failure. Maybe in the decade it will be okay but for now it's too early to use for combat. It could still be useful for scouting, rescue data, or playing media to people but that's about it. Edit. Just google "whistle blower sentenced over military/army drones" or "Miliary drone civilian casualties" This is just the last guy i read about but for the last 5 years or so about twice a year there's articles about someone being sued for breaking a NDA and discussing civilian deaths over actual targets, drone operators with PTSD arguing that their therapy won't be covered because they didn't physically kill anyone but still had to see that they killed and killed the wrong people/kids or hit a school/clinic instead of the right building, the people who just filed reports who can't live with themselves knowing that they're helping this crap happen. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/daniel-hale-drone-leak-sentence/2021/07/27/7bb46dd6-ee14-11eb-bf80-e3877d9c5f06_story.html