Summations Only

No it's not.

Perhaps the main difference between you and I (and Dronester who keeps skying off on such tangents to the detriment of his own arguments) here is that the question "What's the best way to prevent terrorism?" seems to be very much a relevant sub-topic given the context here.

As I understand it there have been nearly 300 drone attacks in Pakistan and several in Yemen and Somalia as well. Most of these have not been in "semi-autonomous-tribal-regions" and if taken to it's logical conclusion the US stance would mean that any government could, under the cover of counter-terrorism imperatives, legitimately decide to target and kill an individual on the territory of any State if it considers that said individual constitutes a threat.Are you saying that US drone attacks never take place on the soil of other nation states?

OK. Do you think it likely that some of the US drone strikes might be legitimately described in that way? "Are not" murder because they are on some sort of ""semi-autonomous-tribal" land?Is that really the deciding factor here?

It's the refusal to accept the status quo as the best that can be achieved. Imagine the great speeches of yesteryear if your approach had been taken....."I have a dream. Not an unrealistic pipe-deream. Not a dream where unrealistic seeming things like a black man in the White House or the acceptance of mixed race marriages are acceptable. No. Just a pragmatic dream whereby we accept segregation and just try to get by with a bad situation. A dream where we just all try and get on with one-another whilst accepting things basically as they are....."But I digress...

On what basis are you convinced that those undertaking the attacks are doing the necessary moral calculus?

So would I. In fact I would go so far as to say it is inevitably the case. Why?The sheer number of attacks in question, the sheer amount of collateral damage (i.e. civilian deaths and maimings) that the attacks in question have resulted in, the less than exemplary moral track record of the US military, the fact that the attacks are often undertaken by intelligence agencies who are notoriously unaccountable for their actions, the psychological need to dehumanise those one is required to harm or kill, the sort of apathy to atrocities exhibited by people like you, the fact that it’s all too easy to lose moral perspective when it is your job to sit thousands of miles away from those you are killing effectively operating controls that are not dissimilar to those found in a video game, the footage of US troops taking a jingoistic and gung-ho approach to killing people, the fact that humans will invariably provide post-hoc rationalisations to the morally dubious actions they take or support, reports from the UN and other organisations stating that the attacks in question flout long established standards of human rights and so on and so forth.So having established that immoral killings are taking place the only question left in this thread is whether such killings can legitimately be described as "murder".Whilst in a legal technical sense the answer is probably "no" I would suggest that in more common parlance the term "murder" is probably quite apt.

See Message 302

All I'm asking for is consistency really.If when US citizens are killed by those who consider themselves at "war" with America it is "murder" but when the US kills people it believes it is at "war" with it isn't murder - Then I think the word "murder" is being used inconsistently and emotively for reasons that largely amount to propaganda. Then I suggest you complain equally vociferously when the term "murder" is used in other circumstances.Taking their cue from the US, how long before Russia and China are start killing off people they don't like around the world with drones......? Will we be discussing the legal technicalities of whether these attacks constitute "murder" or not? I doubt it....

Yes they are human. And given the demonstrable ability of humans to act immorally or to psychologically immunise themselves from actions they might normally consider immoral - I think you have pretty much made my point for me.

How about if you know your attack will inevitably kill civilians and you think it probable that it will also kill an enemy soldier?Is that "murder".....How about if you think there is a vague chance you will kill an enemy soldier and you don't care that a bunch of civilians will inevitably get killed in the attack - Is that murder?Your example is too black and white, too sanitised, too clean cut to realistically represent the full extent and nature of the attacks that have taken place. So does wiping out a city of civilians with a nuclear bomb constitute "murder" or not? I'm sure the terrorists who attack New York and London think of themselves waging war in exactly the same way that those who drop bombs do. It is NOT an "accident". It is at best a calculated decision. And given all the factors I mentioned in Message 302 it isn't a calculated decision that we can just assume is always morally legitimate.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

No. Rather you should question your assumption that all the attacks in question are morally legitimate because of the following already stated reasons. Here they are again.The sheer number of attacks in question, the sheer amount of collateral damage (i.e. civilian deaths and maimings) that the attacks in question have resulted in, the less than exemplary moral track record of the US military, the fact that the attacks are often undertaken by intelligence agencies who are notoriously unaccountable for their actions, the psychological need to dehumanise those one is required to harm or kill, the sort of apathy to atrocities exhibited by people like Catholic Scientist, the fact that it’s all too easy to lose moral perspective when it is your job to sit thousands of miles away from those you are killing effectively operating controls that are not dissimilar to those found in a video game, the footage of US troops taking a jingoistic and gung-ho approach to killing people, the fact that humans will invariably provide post-hoc rationalisations to the morally dubious actions they take or support, reports from the UN and other organisations stating that the attacks in question flout long established standards of human rights and so on and so forth.In short (to quote Robert Wright) because "human beings are a species splendid in their array of moral equipment, tragic in their propensity to misuse it, and pathetic in their ignorance of the misuse".