Originally published at: Did US kill al Qaeda leader with "flying Ginsu" drone? | Boing Boing
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What about one of those shotgun like anti-personnel suicide drones we’ve been sending to Ukraine?
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The Hellfire missiles can be launched from Predator drones, which have a really long range and loitering time. The Switchblade drones are launched from the ground and only have a limited range. Biden emphasized that no US personnel were on the ground.
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Makes me think there are a number of CIA contractors walking around on stilts.
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Hell, it could have been a commercial drone from Best Buy…
Don’t really care. The evil SoB is dead.
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How long until the military and cutlery/blender companies start doing collabs? Imagine a Vitamix branded drone 
/s
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If this absurdly sadistic weapon has to be used, there’s no more deserving victim than this fundie piece of garbage.
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Well that’s the main question. Who can say that assassination was necessary? Was this 71-year-old guy about to attack the U.S., and this was literally the only way to stop him? Would the Taliban have responded to an ultimatum to an arrest and extradition, if we proved to them that we knew he was there?
Really feels like this was an act of revenge rather than a necessary and urgent step to protect American lives. But we don’t necessarily know all the facts, I guess.
As for how “absurdly sadistic” this is, I think, sadly, many of the other weapons the U.S. uses are far worse. Incendiary bombs and flame throwers, for example.
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Much as we do not like thinking about it, this is what the CIA does.
There is a quote often attributed to Winston Churchill that I’ve always liked: “We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.”
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Often attributed to George Orwell, also. And Kipling. And LeCarré.
And it’s worth pointing out that those “rough men” have made the world a whole lot less safe by visiting violence on people who probably meant us no harm.
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It is the willingness to do it unquestioningly that concerns me.
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He continued to be a leader of the group, so I guess that was the rationale. I really don’t care, and he lived far too long a life bringing misery to others as it was.
Worse, yes. But it doesn’t get more absurd that “a missile … with knives”.
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Wouldn’t surprise me if they’re able to launch Switchblade drones from Predator drones which provide the uplink back to base.
There’s also the issue that violence begets violence, especially when the US which has more education, resources and power prefers to spend its time and wealth on destruction instead of other more productive methods. The US has a long tradition of fucking up the politics and economy of other countries and then pretending to be shocked when terrible wide ranging consequences pop up several generations later.
Improving the situation in the Middle East is complicated and shouldn’t fall solely on the US, but bombing the shit out of innocent people in the name of security (of the US) does not seem like it’s been working.
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A lot less messy than leaving parts of a stealth helicopter behind for the chinese government to pick through. Less messy than having large chunks of a building fly all over the place that could hurt or kill civilians. This is still gruesome stuff to deal with but if this attack happened years ago without that weapon, there would have been significantly higher causalities.
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Yep. That’s the longer version of what I was acknowledging.
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I’m not sure how this weapon is any more or less sadistic than any other Hellfire missile. The fact that it is just kinetic and not explosive makes way less likely to hurt anyone else, least.
While I find targeted assassinations problematic, I find it really hard to argue against its use against someone like al-Zawahiri. 
But you aren’t wrong it feels like revenge. As I understand it, he was still a terrorist leader, so could still be planning attacks.
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What if the billions of “defense” dollars were just spent helping people instead of bombing them?
I know there can be a thousand problems with this plan, but at least murder (and generational revenge) is pushed further down on the to do list.
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The military/industrial complex would suffer and of course we gotta keep those poor folks employed and justify their paychecks
/s
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