Look when attacks are made on civilian targets because terrorists are present the civilian casualties aren’t accidents. It isn’t negligence. It’s calculated in the sense that the outcome is pretty much a forgone conclusion and the civilian casualties are deemed acceptable.
Now you may think it morally justifiable. Or you may think it morally repugnant. Are the deaths and maimings of a school full of kids worth the killing of a terrorist who may or may not go on to kill many many others? It’s a difficult question with no easy answers. Personally I wouldn’t do it. But if the terrorist in question then went on to kill thousands I’d also have to live with that.
I agree with a lot of what you wrote. In the West we have grown up in a situation where we are able to police ourselves. If there is a bad man living next door then we can send in the police and get him.
If we had a home grown fundamentalist christian group that hijacked planes and ran them into mosques in Mecca what do you think would happen? I would think that our own law enforcement would work quickly and try to bring those terrorists to justice. We would probably even work with foreign law enforcement agents to ensure those arrests.
Did that happen with 9/11, or other terrorist attacks spawned by these terrorist groups? No. What we are dealing with is nation states who do not have our best interests at heart. We are dealing with nation states that either overtly or tacitly support terrorist attacks against the US. It is the sovereign states that support terrorism that have put their citizens in harms way by making those choices. It is definitely an unfortunate state of affairs, but in our current political structure of nation states this is how it works. The citizens share the fate of their government.
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