AP IMPACT: study suggests drones kill far fewer civilians than many Pakistanis believe

[limpyhobbler]

71. It's easy to understand if you think those terrorist groups pose a real threat.

I think there is a real dangerous threat. I guess you don't think that. That must account for the difference.

"Establishing a global religious dictatorship"? How the bloody hell would they do that without powerful imperial armies?

That's their goal. They will take over any country they can. It is very real to think they could take over Pakistan, or Saudi Arabia. Then they would be (nuclear) armed and very dangerous. And also they could have oil and money. Also given the opportunity they will attack other countries.

If they had such things, why would they be using terrorist tactics, which as everyone agrees are weapons of the weak?

agreed

You are a citizen of the only country which has actually established a global military dictatorship.

We may be using different definitions of the word "dictatorship". For the purposes of this issue, let's say a dictatorship is a form of government that will execute you if you shave.

And no, it isn't necessary to directly administer colonies as was the practice in the 19th century. We do it the Roman way, by having picked natives run the colonies on behalf of our 1%.

I agree we do that. It's horrible. But what does that have to do with the issue of how we should fight terrorists groups in Pakistan? What are you saying that just because we are an empire that we should not fight these creeps? I don't think like that.

The problem with that is that they occasionally get disobedient and pursue their own interests.

I agree with you. This is a big issue of our foreign policy.

Terrorists are weak by definition. If they were strong, they could stop us from dominating their countries. Quit trying to dominate them, and POOF! no terrorism.

I think you are confusing the terrorist groups with the mainstream people of the countries. In my thinking the terrorist groups do not represent the people of Pakistan or any other country. And yet they could take over a couple countries and keep spreading their extremist lunacy. Even if we brought every soldier and every drone home to the US, those groups would keep right on violently spreading their shit without end. Let's discourage that.

That seems to be a key difference in how my opinion is different from yours. You think the reason they hate us is because we attack their countries. I think they just want to violently spread religion and they will attack anything that gets in their way.

Sometimes it seems to me that people have to ignore the real threats to get situations to fit neatly in with an anti-imperialist world view. Much of that view I share. But not everything in real life fits neatly into an ideology and I'm not going to cram reality into a box just to be consistently anti-imperialist. Since these threatening groups exist, we have to collect intelligence on those threats. And once we have information it would be negligent not to act on it.