Drones, Awlaki Part 2

[jimnyc]

The other thread devolved, then crashed and burned. I'm starting fresh by answering the questions Rev had asked.

----


For those that believe ANY excuse is the same as a real excuse.

Not sure I EVER heard anyone claim they were the same.


Please answer this question honestly? do you think 9/11 was "an excuse" to attack radical islam?

Not even remotely close. 9/11 was radical Islam attacking us.


was it "ANY" excuse or a legit excuse?

It was MORE than a legitimate excuse. 3,000 innocent people killed on our own soil. Couldn't think of a better reason. And you know what, it WASN'T an excuse at all, but rather a damn good explanation/reason.


was the pentagon? the attack in France? Or the attempts elsewhere?

The Pentagon was 9/11, so the above applies. France was similar, radical Islam attacking innocents. Same in London and a few other places.


Did they INSPIRE many young men to join the military to fight? YES OR NO?

Don't know. If I was younger I sure as hell would have wanted to join.


Many here are ENRAGED at islam in general now but before 9/11 most barely gave a thought to muslims.

That's what happens when mass death is brought to your own soil. And I think you're wrong anyway. Myself and many others were all over this kind of stuff in the 90's as well. And growing up I just thought they were rabid folks on the other side of the world, at least those forever killing.


If you lived in YEMAN or the other 15+ nations where the US has drone strikes on your friends and neighbors would that give you "an excuse" to want to join a group that was against the U.S.? yes or no?

No. As for me? I would be sending letters and shaking hands for their efforts to help get rid of the terrorists and terrorism. If I had a terrorist living 4 doors down, I would PLEAD with whoever is in charge to drop a missile on his house.


As strange as this is for us to believe many people in foreign countries don't live everyday thinking about the U.S.. But if bombs kills their nieces cousins and uncle at a funeral--then U.S. becomes TOP of mind in a negative way.

And no different no matter the weapon used, so this wasn't about drones either. Nor about which country, as collateral damage happens everywhere.


do you think Reading Americans on boards like this saying things like "well they shouldn't have been at the funeral" "well they shouldn't be terrorist in that country PLANNING to attack america" will calm them down?

Where was it stated that they shouldn't have been at a funeral? I'd like to read for context. Was it a large target terrorist, with many terrorists at the funeral? I need to read the post/thread/situation before I can answer. Who wrote that?


Is it EASIER or HARDER for the HARD core radicals to recuit these people at that point?

With estimates as high as 25% of Islam being radicalized, probably easy. Doesn't even remotely change the fact that the terrorists need to die. No way in hell we should walk because he/she may be a recruiting tool.


Will F15s make tat situation BETTER jim?

You tell me, you guys went on and on about the drone use in quite a few threads. If it were simply killing terrorists with ANY weapon, then the drones specifically shouldn't have been the discussion and the generalization should have been specified. But no, it won't be better. I think if you pee out of an airplane they will recruit. A picture of Muhammed is an awesome recruiting tool. Seal action will end up being used to recruit. Boots on the ground in Iraq is used to recruit. Supporting Israel will be used to recruit. This is why it's STUPID to point out specifically drone use, as if another method will somehow make things better.

But the terrorists still need to die. If others become terrorists as a result, then they go too if they act on it. Same as murderers, if they are planning other murders and running around with weapons - kill them. If a family member now becomes a murderer as a result, and runs around doing similar, and is planning more - kill him on the spot when you see him.

[jimnyc]

I did a lookup on "funeral" and went back as far as 7/2013 and the only thing I found about terrorists and a funeral was when it was posted about a terrorist who wore a suicide belt to a funeral and accidentally blew up. I'm not going back further than that opening a zillion threads. I also looked up the exact quote given, and nothing. I then searched on "shouldn't funeral" and couldn't find the quote in question. I then tried "they funeral" and nothing. "terrorist funeral" and still the one about the suicide belt. I'll have to wait for Rev to link us to the quote in question he gave as I can't find it on my own.

[revelarts]

I did a lookup on "funeral" and went back as far as 7/2013 and the only thing I found about terrorists and a funeral was when it was posted about a terrorist who wore a suicide belt to a funeral and accidentally blew up. I'm not going back further than that opening a zillion threads. I also looked up the exact quote given, and nothing. I then searched on "shouldn't funeral" and couldn't find the quote in question. I then tried "they funeral" and nothing. "terrorist funeral" and still the one about the suicide belt. I'll have to wait for Rev to link us to the quote in question he gave as I can't find it on my own.


do you think Reading Americans on boards like this saying things like "well they shouldn't have been at the funeral" "well they shouldn't be terrorist in that country PLANNING to attack america" will calm them down?
like meaning here 'NOT EXACT QUOTES BUT SIMILAR TOO' and referring to those on the board in america in general. But I could make my post even longer and include "NOT EXACT QUOTES BUT SIMILAR TOO" instead of "LIKE", and list other boards but i hope people get the gist. you "collateral damage" statement is LIKE those quotes and is NO comfort to those who have had innocent people die. EXACTLY as you characterize the victims of 9/11.

they considered their dead EXACTLY the same way you do. as an unprovoked attack against innocents.
AQ's excuse/reason was western invasion in scarred saudi lands, so it's worth it to kill innocents.
Ours is retaliation for killing innocents it's so it's OK to kill innocents by accident, we KNOW we will, but we do it anyway... again and again and again.

"collateral damage" No comfort or good "reason" to those who are living in a country where they don't know if TODAY a drone bomb will hit the local school, neighbors house or office building farm or factory.

Common sense will tell you that Drones have in fact increase the numbers of our enemies, and turned more opinions against us in general where it was not needed.


...As the UK newspaper The Guardian reports, targeted killings are anything but: "Even when operators target specific individuals — the most focused effort of what Barack Obama calls 'targeted killing' — they kill vastly more people than their targets, often needing to strike multiple times."One example is Qari Hussain, who was a deputy commander of the Pakistani Taliban. A Hellfire missile fired by one of Obama's Predator drones blew up Hussain on Oct. 15, 2010. To the president, this was a success.
What the White House doesn't say, however, is there were five previous drone attacks against Hussain. All five failed, killing scores of innocent people. "For the death of a man whom practically no American can name, the U.S. killed 128 people, 13 of them children, none of whom it meant to harm."
The 128 civilians-to-one-militant death ratio doesn't even address the legality of targeting Hussain himself, in violation of a 30-year-old executive order banning political assassinations, not to mention the longstanding American political tradition prohibiting such actions. All drone assassinations are illegal, but the sloppiness of this program is insane.
As the French anti-revolutionary leader Francois de Charette said at his trial, you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. Even by the glib standards of such warmongering bastards, however, Obama's willingness to slaughter countless innocents in his quest to terminate a terrorist needle in a tribal area haystack places him among history's more bloodthirsty turds.
Al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, for example, has survived two drone attacks that killed 76 children and 29 adults.
According to Reprieve's analysis as of Nov. 24, 1,147 people were killed in attempts to kill 41 men....
http://www.creators.com/liberal/ted-rall/american-drones-kill-28-innocent-people-for-every-bad-guy-target.html
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/nov/24/-sp-us-drone-strikes-kill-1147

[NightTrain]

I'm not sure why you're hung up on drones, Rev. They are a tool, just the same as an F-22, an A-10, a .50 cal sniper rifle, 155mm Howitzer, an M1A1 Abrams, a Tomahawk Missile, an Apache helicopter or a knife in the hands of a SEAL.

In fact, if you consider the different options, drones give the most surgical strike capability because of their accuracy and their ability to loiter at no risk to Americans until the time to strike is optimal for minimal danger to others around the target and a higher probability to kill the target.

I think what you're losing sight of is the fact that all the 'innocents' immediately surrounding the target are guilty by association. If they truly did not agree with what the terrorist is doing, then they would not be in his immediate vicinity. They're not hanging out with him for the Wednesday Knitting Circle Awards.

That's the job of our military - to protect this country, Americans and our Allies.

Don't get the cart in front of the horse. We are killing terrorists because they have, and continue to, attack American civilians both domestically and internationally. Not to mention the millions of other nationalities. The fact that they use ANY excuse to recruit islamobots shouldn't be an issue.

If it isn't drones, then it's missiles. If it isn't missiles, then it's tanks. If it isn't tanks then it's Mossad. If it isn't Mossad, then it's the illuminati. It's all a zionist conspiracy. Cartoonists drew a picture. Israel retaliated against palestinians. If you really want an eye-opener, look at the comments section on the European version of Al Jazeera. We are dealing with literal fanatics that lie about absolutely everything that might gain them an advantage - and the lies are totally sanctioned by the Quran because they are dealing with non-muslims.

Check out the definitions of 'taqiyya' and 'kitman' sometime, and then ask the next muslim about those concepts the next time you run across who is clearly making shit up. They will not talk about it, and I've been met with Radio Silence 100% of the time.

[revelarts]

I'm not sure why you're hung up on drones, Rev. They are a tool, just the same as an F-22, an A-10, a .50 cal sniper rifle, 155mm Howitzer, an M1A1 Abrams, a Tomahawk Missile, an Apache helicopter or a knife in the hands of a SEAL.

In fact, if you consider the different options, drones give the most surgical strike capability because of their accuracy and their ability to loiter at no risk to Americans until the time to strike is optimal for minimal danger to others around the target and a higher probability to kill the target.

I think what you're losing sight of is the fact that all the 'innocents' immediately surrounding the target are guilty by association. If they truly did not agree with what the terrorist is doing, then they would not be in his immediate vicinity. They're not hanging out with him for the Wednesday Knitting Circle Awards.

That's the job of our military - to protect this country, Americans and our Allies.

Don't get the cart in front of the horse. We are killing terrorists because they have, and continue to, attack American civilians both domestically and internationally. Not to mention the millions of other nationalities. The fact that they use ANY excuse to recruit islamobots shouldn't be an issue.

If it isn't drones, then it's missiles. If it isn't missiles, then it's tanks. If it isn't tanks then it's Mossad. If it isn't Mossad, then it's the illuminati. It's all a zionist conspiracy. Cartoonists drew a picture. Israel retaliated against palestinians. If you really want an eye-opener, look at the comments section on the European version of Al Jazeera. We are dealing with literal fanatics that lie about absolutely everything that might gain them an advantage - and the lies are totally sanctioned by the Quran because they are dealing with non-muslims.

Check out the definitions of 'taqiyya' and 'kitman' sometime, and then ask the next muslim about those concepts the next time you run across who is clearly making shit up. They will not talk about it, and I've been met with Radio Silence 100% of the time.

what we're losing sight of the LAW, the constitution thats's the real problem here.
next is our flippant way of dismissing drone srikes as surgical and those around them as "in their knitting circle".
AlWalkis son had relations but no terrorist active even reported. since when do we kill even murders kids because the father was a bad? it's wrong.

here's a picture of a knitting circle hit by a drone.
http://www.msnbc.com/sites/msnbc/files/styles/ratio--83-34--830x340/public/h_9.00045126.jpg?itok=GsLJ0icB


but IMO there's so much wrong with your statement it's hard to address ,
BUT lets just go with it for a minute.
If i'm not mistaken some people have mentioned here and it's been reported that there are terrorist cells in the U.S..
Obama and the CIA is not only using the criteria of "this guy has committed a terrorist act, or is a KNOWN part of a terror group." but things like "this guy is between 18 and 45 and living in an area with known terrorist and has a gun.
so he's a target Kill him." seriously i'm not lying or exaggerating AT ALL, look it up for your selves.

Ok since there are known terrorist on the streets in the U.S. is it OK to drone strike the homes of these people? if it's going to means less U.S. soldiers are going to be hurt in their capture. Ok to strike them at the mall at the funeral home when the Fire dept and paramedic arrive to strike the firemen etc.. this IS happening and has happened in drone strikes. Are we losing site of the big picture? that terrorist are bad people and need to killed no matter who else gets hurt? just collateral damage to innocents but MORE U.S. lives saved in the end so it's worth it right? i mean these terrorist are ACTUALLY IN THE U.S. NOW aren't they MORE dangerous than someone in Yeman or Pakistan that can't get a VISA to the U.S. or afford to buy a goat?

[revelarts]

...On December 30 of last year, ABC News reported on (http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/tariq-khan-killed-cia-drone/story?id=15258659#.Ty6WdVxAaYg) a 16-year-old Pakistani boy, Tariq Khan, who was killed with his 12-year-old cousin when a car in which he was riding was hit with a missile fired by a U.S. drone. As I noted at the time (http://www.salon.com/2012/01/03/matt_taibbi_on_the_2012_election/), the report contained this extraordinary passage buried in the middle:
Asked for documentation of Tariq and Waheed’s deaths, Akbar did not provide pictures of the missile strike scene. Virtually none exist, since drones often target people who show up at the scene of an attack.
What made that sentence so amazing was that it basically amounts to a report that the U.S. first kills people with drones, then fires on the rescuers and others who arrive at the scene where the new corpses and injured victims lie
In a just-released, richly documented report (http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2012/02/04/obama-terror-drones-cia-tactics-in-pakistan-include-targeting-rescuers-and-funerals/), the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, on behalf of the Sunday Times, documents that this is exactly what the U.S. is doing — and worse:

The CIA’s drone campaign in Pakistan has killed dozens of civilians who had gone to help rescue victims or were attending funerals, an investigation by the Bureau for the Sunday Times has revealed.
The findings are published just days after President Obama claimed that the drone campaign in Pakistan was a “targeted, focused effort” that “has not caused a huge number of civilian casualties”. . . .
A three month investigation including eye witness reports has found evidence that at least 50 civilians were killed in follow-up strikes when they had gone to help victims. More than 20 civilians have also been attacked in deliberate strikes on funerals and mourners. The tactics have been condemned by leading legal experts.
http://www.salon.com/2012/02/05/u_s_drones_targeting_rescuers_and_mourners/
.....



https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/10/the-nsas-secret-role/


the National Security Agency is using complex analysis of electronic surveillance, rather than human intelligence, as the primary method to locate targets for lethal drone strikes – an unreliable tactic that results in the deaths of innocent or unidentified people.
According to a former drone operator for the military’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) who also worked with the NSA, the agency often identifies targets based on controversial metadata analysis and cell-phone tracking technologies. Rather than confirming a target’s identity with operatives or informants on the ground, the CIA or the U.S. military then orders a strike based on the activity and location of the mobile phone a person is believed to be using.
The drone operator, who agreed to discuss the top-secret programs on the condition of anonymity, was a member of JSOC’s High Value Targeting task force, which is charged with identifying, capturing or killing terrorist suspects in Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
His account is bolstered by top-secret NSA documents previously provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden. It is also supported by a former drone sensor operator with the U.S. Air Force, Brandon Bryant, who has become an outspoken critic of the lethal operations in which he was directly involved in Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen.
In one tactic, the NSA “geolocates” the SIM card or handset of a suspected terrorist’s mobile phone, enabling the CIA and U.S. military to conduct night raids and drone strikes to kill or capture the individual in possession of the device.

The former JSOC drone operator is adamant that the technology has been responsible for taking out terrorists and networks of people facilitating improvised explosive device attacks against U.S. forces in Afghanistan. But he also states that innocent people have “absolutely” been killed as a result of the NSA’s increasing reliance on the surveillance tactic.
One problem, he explains, is that targets are increasingly aware of the NSA’s reliance on geolocating, and have moved to thwart the tactic. Some have as many as 16 different SIM cards associated with their identity within the High Value Target system. Others, unaware that their mobile phone is being targeted, lend their phone, with the SIM card in it, to friends, children, spouses and family members.
Some top Taliban leaders, knowing of the NSA’s targeting method, have purposely and randomly distributed SIM cards among their units in order to elude their trackers. “They would do things like go to meetings, take all their SIM cards out, put them in a bag, mix them up, and everybody gets a different SIM card when they leave,” the former drone operator says. “That’s how they confuse us.”
As a result, even when the agency correctly identifies and targets a SIM card belonging to a terror suspect, the phone may actually be carried by someone else, who is then killed in a strike. According to the former drone operator, the geolocation cells at the NSA that run the tracking program – known as Geo Cell –sometimes facilitate strikes without knowing whether the individual in possession of a tracked cell phone or SIM card is in fact the intended target of the strike.
“Once the bomb lands or a night raid happens, you know that phone is there,” he says. “But we don’t know who’s behind it, who’s holding it. It’s of course assumed that the phone belongs to a human being who is nefarious and considered an ‘unlawful enemy combatant.’ This is where it gets very shady.”
The former drone operator also says that he personally participated in drone strikes where the identity of the target was known, but other unknown people nearby were also killed.
“They might have been terrorists,” he says. “Or they could have been family members who have nothing to do with the target’s activities.”
What’s more, he adds, the NSA often locates drone targets by analyzing the activity of a SIM card, rather than the actual content of the calls. Based on his experience, he has come to believe that the drone program amounts to little more than death by unreliable metadata.
“People get hung up that there’s a targeted list of people,” he says. “It’s really like we’re targeting a cell phone. We’re not going after people – we’re going after their phones, in the hopes that the person on the other end of that missile is the bad guy.”....

[revelarts]

..the most extremist power any political leader can assert is the power to target his own citizens for execution without any charges or due process, far from any battlefield. The Obama administration has not only asserted exactly that power in theory, but has exercised it in practice. In September 2011, it killed US citizen Anwar Awlaki in a drone strike in Yemen, along with US citizen Samir Khan, and then, in circumstances that are still unexplained, two weeks later killed Awlaki's 16-year-old American son Abdulrahman (http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/abdulrahman-al-awlaki-death-10470891) with a separate drone strike in Yemen.Since then, senior Obama officials including Attorney General Eric Holder and John Brennan, Obama's top terrorism adviser and his current nominee to lead the CIA, have explicitly argued that the president is and should be vested with this power. Meanwhile, a Washington Post article from October (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/24/obama-terrorism-kill-list) reported that the administration is formally institutionalizing this president's power to decide who dies under the Orwellian title "disposition matrix".

When the New York Times back in April, 2010 first confirmed the existence (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/world/middleeast/07yemen.html?hp) of Obama's hit list, it made clear just what an extremist power this is, noting: "It is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for an American to be approved for targeted killing." The NYT quoted a Bush intelligence official as saying "he did not know of any American who was approved for targeted killing under the former president". When the existence of Obama's hit list was first reported several months earlier (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/26/AR2010012604239.html?hpid=topnews) by the Washington Post's Dana Priest, she wrote that the "list includes three Americans".

What has made these actions all the more radical is the absolute secrecy with which Obama has draped all of this. Not only is the entire process carried out solely within the Executive branch (http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/05/us-cia-killlist-idUSTRE79475C20111005) - with no checks or oversight of any kind - but there is zero transparency and zero accountability. The president's underlings compile their proposed lists of who should be executed, and the president - at a charming weekly event dubbed by White House aides as "Terror Tuesday" - then chooses from "baseball cards" and decrees in total secrecy who should die. The power of accuser, prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner are all consolidated in this one man, and those powers are exercised in the dark....
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/feb/05/obama-kill-list-doj-memo

sums up the problem well.

[BoogyMan]

The problem here seems to be that many are willing to overlook the fact thousands of Americans were murdered in cold blood on 9/11 and demand that we not see the broader problem created by the fact that the growing cult of Islam is a two headed beast that seems to not only hate itself but everyone else as well.

When the answer to religious differences is "kill em' all" there is certainly no guidance from God in such a scenario as well as the fact that those the useful idiots wish to call "moderate Islamists" don't actually exist.

[revelarts]

CIA admits targeted killings can and have backfired... DUH


Leaked CIA report says targeted killing programs could backfire December 19, 2014 01:08



Drone strikes and other targeted counterinsurgency programs aimed at capturing or killing “high-value targets” belonging to militant groups could be effective if coupled with larger strategic goals, the CIA believes, but they could also backfire.
That’s the conclusion the agency came to back in 2009, when it completed a review of the positive and negative consequences of targeted assassinations on counterinsurgency efforts. Published online by WikiLeaks (https://wikileaks.org/cia-hvt-counterinsurgency/) on Thursday, the document – dubbed “Making High-Value Targeting Operations an Effective Counterinsurgency Tool” – details operations and outcomes in countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Colombia, Northern Ireland, and more.
These types of high-value targeting (HVT) operations were said to involve taking aim at individuals whose death, or “removal,” as the CIA termed it, “disproportionately degrade[s] an insurgent group’s effectiveness.”

....While HVT efforts were found to have worked in some cases –...

... On the other hand, HVT operations could backfire if they led to local populations sympathizing with insurgents or caused governments to overlook other elements of its strategy. Targeted strikes could also radicalize remaining leadership, potentially opening the group to more extreme members and worldviews. Additionally, even failed or successful attempts could “enhance an insurgent leader’s lore” or have negative effects if civilians are killed. When not paired with competent and influential governments, HVT operations were found to be lacking, particularly in the case of the Taliban, the report found. Despite ongoing operations in Afghanistan, corruption in the government and its lack of influence in much of the country caused many problems for counterinsurgency efforts.
Combined with the ability of Taliban leaders to hide in the mountains of neighboring Pakistan, there were little gains to be had for the Afghan government, NATO, and the US.
“The Taliban has a high overall ability to replace lost leaders, a centralized but flexible command and control overlaid with egalitarian Pashtun structures, and good succession planning and bench strength, especially at the middle levels,” the report said. ....
http://rt.com/usa/215787-cia-leak-targeted-killings-terrorism/

[NightTrain]

Well, Rev, I think it's safe to say that the exterminations will continue until the residents of a targeted area rise up and remove the offending terrorists from their midst.

The fact that they do not pretty much sums up the whole thing. I'll continue to sleep well at night knowing our military is actively killing these lunatics before they can launch another attack on America.

There's only one way the killings will stop, and it rests completely in the hands of the populace that allows and encourages, tacitly or otherwise, the barbaric killings of civilized people the world over. We either kill them over there or they'll soon be here killing as many of our women and children as they possibly can. And then you'll see the 'innocents' you are so worried about dancing in the streets thanking Allah for a great victory.

Which scenario would you prefer?

[revelarts]

Well, Rev, I think it's safe to say that the exterminations will continue until the residents of a targeted area rise up and remove the offending terrorists from their midst.

The fact that they do not pretty much sums up the whole thing. I'll continue to sleep well at night knowing our military is actively killing these lunatics before they can launch another attack on America.

There's only one way the killings will stop, and it rests completely in the hands of the populace that allows and encourages, tacitly or otherwise, the barbaric killings of civilized people the world over. We either kill them over there or they'll soon be here killing as many of our women and children as they possibly can. And then you'll see the 'innocents' you are so worried about dancing in the streets thanking Allah for a great victory.

Which scenario would you prefer?

I think your scenarios are wrong so it's not a realistic choice.

i think what we're getting now is
we lose our constitutional gov't over here to a totalitarian one that claims to be making us safer all the while it's really just making us bankrupt and stirring up enemies out of next to NOTHING from people that never intended to leave the M.E. anyway.


But you seem to think the ONLY way for us to handle the problem is by drones or F15's, TSA, the gov't listening to every U.S. phone call. It's a case of of using a blow torch to kill the roaches in your own house.

But many refuse to think outside the given "solutions" and push the gov't to use other BETTER means to neutralize the real problem people.
Just follow what ever the faux Butch leader in office says needs to be done "kill em all" "only good injuns a dead injun".

[revelarts]

No free people can lose their liberties while they are jealous of liberty. But the liberties of the freest people are in danger when they set up symbols of liberty as fetishes, worshipping the symbol instead of the principle it represents.
– Wendell Phillips (1811-1884), in Liberty and the Great Libertarians (C. Spradling)


There is nothing new in the realization that the Constitution sometimes insulates the criminality of a few in order to protect the privacy of us all.
– Antonin Scalia, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Arizona v. Hicks, 3/3/87

No doctrine involving more pernicious consequences was ever invented by the wit of man than any [constitutional] provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government.
– Roger B. Taney (1777-1864), U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Ex parte Milligan, 1866

[revelarts]

"...Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them.
There is almost no kind of outrage, torture, imprisonment without trial, assassination, and bombing of civilians, which does not change its moral color when it is committed by our side.
The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them."
- George Orwell

[revelarts]

"Emergency does not increase granted power or remove or diminish the restrictions imposed upon power granted or reserved. The Constitution was adopted in a period of grave emergency. Its grants of power to the federal government and its limitations of the power of the States were determined in the light of emergency, and they are not altered by emergency."
– Charles Evans Hughes (1862-1948),
Chief Justice, U.S. Supreme Court, Home Building & Loan Assn v. Blairsdell, 1934

[revelarts]

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
William Pitt

He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from opposition; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself.
Thomas Paine

[NightTrain]

My two scenarios are exactly precise, and you know it. They've already played themselves out right here in America.

What's your solution?

A bouquet flowers with a box of fluffy kittens?

Seriously, dude, these people kill anyone. Of every nationality. Of every race. Of every religion - including their own.

They kill more of everyone else in their attacks because we have our guard up and we're actively exterminating them before they can execute their plots.

You're railing against the only possible course of action.