I was going to add more thoughts but I don't want the NSA to misinterpret what I almost posted.

For example: Let the Chinese or North-Koreans or Al-Qaeda or Iranians blow up your brother or sister or mother or father or your children.

And then reason that you will only seek out that one guy at the end of the chain of command who was just following orders and who is a totally nice guy with family and small kids and pet in real-life and totally doesn't deserve to die if you ask anybody who knows him.

The problem is that there's no person responsible for the killings. Everyone carries a tiny bit of responsibility and guilt, but just such a tiny amount that he can claim in good conscience that he's innocent.

I remember a story I read about 15 years ago. It was about a poor farmer who had gone bankrupt and was about to loose his land to a bank. A bureaucrat came to his land to confiscate it and the farmer greeted him with his rifle.
"Don't shoot me!" the bureaucrat said. "I'm just a lowly messenger doing my job! It's not my fault that you loose your land."
"You are right." the farmer said. "I will drive to the town, walk into your bank and shoot your boss."
"But he's innocent, too." the bureaucrat pleaded. "He's just following the bank-guidelines."
The farmer got angry. "Then I'll drive down to the West-Coast and seek out the bank-headquarter! You have a board of managers! There must be somebody to shoot!"
"They are just employees, too." The bureaucrat answered in a sad voice. "There is nobody to shoot."

It's the same problem with the drone-killings. There is no human responsible for them. Every single person, from those who drafted the policies, to those who ordered the strategy of drone-strikes, to those who ordered specific drone-strikes, to those who carried out specific drone-strikes, is more or less innocent.
But add their actions up and you get a system of murder.

would make me feel better. Would it really work for you?

In fact, I would blame those that actually did it or ordered it and although I would like to be able to get my hands on them and make them see the agony caused by what they did and perhaps suffer some consequences and remorse, their death would not bring me any happiness or peace.

So, I doubt I can ever understand your premise. Stopping those doing the killing even (if killing them is the only way to do it) is one thing killing other innocents is just sick and perpetuates the problem.

Of course, to any sane person, harming innocents is off-limits. To me, too, by the way.

So let's start with a hypothetical, sane, ethically flawless person, looking for those guilty of their loved one's murder:




Let's say, your loved one was robbed and killed on a night out, or he was run over by a drunk driver, or someone talked him into doing drugs and he eventually died of them.

Who's guilty?

Is it the guy who pushed the button or the guy who ordered the button to be pushed or the guy who created the button-pushing?

You can't find out, because you can't pin the blame on a single person.

There's this pain inside you, the uproar, the grief, and you don't even get a person you could hate.

If you could hate somebody, you could project your bad feelings onto them and separate them from the rest of your life.

But you don't get that. They are gone and you don't know who's to blame.

First they lived, now they are dead, and there is no one you could hate for that.

No one.

But there's a system behind those many ones.

Instead of hating a specific murderer, you start hating a generic murderer, a generic drunk driver, a generic drug-dealer.

Now you have an enemy you could hate. An enemy without face or name, an enemy who is easy to dehumanize.

That's why you see "Death To America" instead of "Stop American Military".

The mourner was pushed into a psychological corner where his only chance to keep his sanity was the creation of a dehumanized enemy he could hate.

That's why islamic militants don't hate "Americans". They don't know any! They hate "America". They hate generic people of some anonymous system. Those generic people are guilty, that's why reasoning about not harming actual people is futile. To them, those actual people are either exceptions to the rule or collateral damage or agents of the generic murderers.

Terrorists don't hate people. They hate a system. They hate what they perceive their opponents to be.

Not sure about that last argument? Try this: It applies to Teabaggers, Pro-Lifers, conspiracy-theorists... and to islamic militants. They all have some generic and/or imaginary enemy who they hate with their deepest inner, unaware that the people they harm aren't the enemy.

That's how terrorists are born.

Are you willing to support or carry out acts of terrorism to pay them back? Dead is dead, collateral or otherwise.

or up your priority. I hope people don't go reply.

or you would support others who do the killing or maiming.

You would look at children's dead bodies in the aftermath of the terrorist act you supported, or people whose legs or feet have been blown off, and nod approvingly because in your twisted worldview you got your revenge.

What a disgusting post.

I have never been in a situation where a person caused actual bodily harm to me or a loved one. My guess is that I would be paralyzed in shock for some time until it's too late to actually help. What I would do afterwards, no idea. I doubt that I have the guts to punch or even actually harm someone, but I don't know how I would act in a situation until I am in that situation.

It's really weird how quick people are to put on their mask of civilization.
How they refuse to ponder.
How they refuse to IMAGINE.

If mankind were civilized, there wouldn't be multiple wars raging on this very planet right now.
Militias wouldn't conduct genocidal campaigns in the jungles of South America.
There wouldn't be rape and there wouldn't be people who make up excuses for rapists.
A company wouldn't respond to a series of suicides of their factory-workers by installing nets on their roofs.
Slavery would be a thing of the past. (50 bucks for an haitian girl? Well, that's a price from 2008, but throw in that afghan dance-boy and we have a deal.)
Mankind isn't civilized. And by extension, you and me are not.

Here's my proposal for a compromise:
You keep touting the opinion you just posted.
And then you go and meditate. Explore yourself, get to know yourself, stop lying to yourself. Ask yourself all the questions no decent person would even think about asking. And then answer them to yourself.
Btw, better don't let anyone suspect that you think that humanity has a shred of uncivilized behaviour in itself, or you get judgemental posts like the one above.

And no, I still would not commit, or support, terrorist acts, regardless of what they are intended to avenge.

I respect that. I wouldn't have the inner strength to stay peaceful.

But what would you do?
You see your mother getting blown up. You bury her. You shrug it off. Violence would be wrong.
Then you hear that something similar happened in another town, that something similar is happening in several countries.
You see your kids playing outside, the same drone that killed your mother circling above them.

Do you accept death-by-drone as just another fact-of-life that you cannot change, that you just have to cope with?
Will you teach your kids that they could die anytime because a foreigner in a faraway land might make a mistake?
Will you teach them that there is nothing they can do to stop the foreigners from killing people, because your country is too poor and too small?
Will you teach them that the only option that is within their means is morally wrong?

What's your advice to the Afghanis and Pakistanis and Somalis and Yemenis?
Imagine, you are talking to a child from one of those countries. What do you tell it? How should it deal with the occasional bombing every few weeks? What advice do you have for it?
Imagine, you are talking to a politician from one of those countries. What do you tell him? How should he deal with the fact that a foreign nation conducts bombing-raids on the soil of his sovereign nation and kills his constituents as collateral?

Will you be blunt?
"The US gives a shit about your opinions and pleas and won't stop bombing until it feels like. Accept that, stay peaceful and no one gets hurt."
Or will you sugar-coat it?

That's it? Love?
How is your love supposed to solve a conflict between two other parties, when neither of them cares about your love or your hate?

Oh, of course. It worked for the early Christians. They simply outlasted the ridicule and scape-goating until they became accepted by society.

How long will it take for the people of those countries to outlast the War On Terror? 10 years? 20? 50? 100?
Generations coming and going that never knew what it was like NOT to live in fear of drones?

In other words no.

Having said that, I recognize that I haven't suffered that fate. Nevertheless, should I, I'm quite certain that payback would not be my first, second or third impulse

We are droning them there so we don't have to drone them here!

to individual terror strikes. They do no good and much harm. Even if you succeed in taking out a bad actor, another one just takes his/her place as long as the system is in place. I say no, in spite of the provocation and the revenge motive.

I agree that terrorism targeted towards individuals or individual groups or individual facilities is futile. But the problem is, those people don't have the luxury to choose their targets. They want to get rid of an idea, a system. And they are blinded by their ignorance, pain and ideology and can't see that all the violence they commit is for naught.

Be it with drones or some other form of killing. Regardless of who does it.

That's the only answer you'll get from me.

that 911 happened first. These posts also presuppose that the drones get only bystanders.

If you had lost someone close to you in 911 how would you feel about it? That's just as unfair a question.

If someone stood by knowing their neighbors were planning terrorist attacks, and come to think of it, you were more likely than faraway Americans to die in the terror attacks, how would you feel about it?

Very complex question, not as simple as presented

One who kills innocent people as a form of revenge is simply a murderous psychopath that has no place in society.

I do not condone terrorism.
I do not condone violence.
The "I" refers to my current being.
The question of the OP begins with the word "if", which means that it refers to an hypothetical situation.

Any moral and sane person outside that hypothetical would answer such a dilemma with "No". I do.
However, you have to be aware that you might no longer be "you" once you are inside the hypothetical situation.
People's attitudes shift, people's opinions shift, people's personality shifts, people's motivations shift, people's moral imperatives shift. The girl who saw her grandmother blown up by a drone during the okra-harvest, and then saw those blown up who ran to help her. I guess, she shifted. Watching the bodies of your loved ones burn tends to do that.

This question is an hypothetical: What would you do, if you were in exactly the same situation as millions of others are right now in the world. Would your hypothetical self react like thousands of other people reacted?

If your answer is still No, then you are either a politically correct liar or an upstanding human who deserves true admiration for keeping his moral convictions in the face of death and terror.

There are lots of different kinds of terrorism, but when the word is used today it usually means suicide bombing. Drone attacks and suicide bombings are similar in that the person pulling the trigger really doesn't suffer as a result. It's either some guy in Nevada who isn't even close to the explosion, or some guy that gets snuffed out in an instant with no pain because of it. One gets retirement, the other gets heaven.

I think that a more relevant question to ask is, "Would you be willing to suffer?" Would you be willing to be imprisoned as a political prisoner? Would you be willing to endure and extended military campaign? Would you be willing to suffer with the knowledge that you will never know if your suffering meant anything?

It seems to me that only when people answer yes to that question does shit get real.

hits everyone differently. There is also a question of whether a person experienced the trauma of one event such as you describe or a sustained experience (like living in an actual war zone).

Personally I do not subscribe to such revenge but I have not had such experience(s). I can certainly see how desperation might drive one to think it was there only choice. The same sort of mindset that leads to suicide, murder, terrorism or all of the above.

Julie

the poll is asking whether we would be willing to act like members of a street gang?

"Hey! You killed my best friend! Now I kill your brother!"

"Oh yeah? You killed my brother...now I kill two of your brothers!"

And on and on until it gets to the point where nobody remembers what started it all in the first place.

Gangs are stupid. Revenge is stupid.

and its a 'push-poll' question, clearly looking for a particular response.

I wouldn't answer, even if I could ever get huffpo to open properly.