If some other nation had clandestine organizations working US soil to capture or eliminate citizens or legal foreign nations on belief they were criminals or security threats, would the US view this organization as criminal or terrorist?
The CIA and Navy Seal Team 6 on the surface would seem to be outside of US justice and oversight. They, like the Blackwater operatives have conducted questionable killings and lose of liberty of private citizens. I am quite sure in many cases they by passed getting the blessing of the governments in whose nations they were operating in. If some nation sneaked operatives into the US to capture and ferret out of the nation to stand trial in their home country or simply assassinated them, would the US see them as terrorist or criminals killing US citizen, or view them as patriots trying to do what is in the best interest of their nation? If they are looked at as terrorist or criminals, how does the US doing the same to them not criminal or an act of terrorism?
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First, this isn’t an ‘IF’ question. It almost assuredly is truly happening today.
Second, I think that the underlying question is how and what the are doing. Terror is generally described as activities that are designed to terrorize/scare a random group within the US (like blowing up a city bus). Some clandestine agency that is operating in the US looking for specific people (its own former citizens, for example) but not randomly affecting the general public – I would not call those people terrorists. Criminals, assassins, spies, perhaps, but doubtful they would be terrorists.
To your final point. You naively think that there is some sort of equivalency in what US does in other countries and what we would allow to happen here. You are wrong with that assumption. The US does what it does abroad, regardless of what might or not be tolerated here. Sure, it’s hypocritical. But so what? Almost everything is excused nowadays in the name of ‘national security’.
We do not live in a moral or fair world.
^ We do not live in a moral or fair world.
WE have something to agree with, I knew this long ago.
Of course we don’t practice what we preach! Nobody does. Clandestine translates to “whatever we can get away with” and everybody knows it.
‘We don’t live in a moral or fair world’. Perhaps not but is up to us to make it moral and fair. It won’t happen by itself.
@flutherother . No, it isn’t. Maybe in some dreamland, society places an obligation on all living people to make it moral and fair. But in the real world, that’s not true.
Sure, religion (for its own reasons) suggests that morality and fairness are worthy goals, but those are based on that religion’s views, and are certainly not universal.
I suppose you’re partially correct in saying “it’s up to us” because if not humans, who else? But that doesn’t make it an obligation. Sort of an action of choice.
The U.S. involvement in Guatemala , Chile and Iran and numerous other places is well documented. If any other nation engaged in such shenanigans, the U.S. government would issue all kinds of cries of condemnation.
As to whether the world is fair, I do believe it is getting fairer. @Hypocrisy_Central will disagree with this, but I think the change is largely due to abandoning religious belief in favor of rationality. Once again I post Steven Pinker’s video related to his book Better Angels of Our Nature, which I think is rather thought provoking.
@elbanditoroso It’s an action of choice but don’t we want the world to be moral and fair? If a person isn’t moral and fair what do we think of them? Even a religion that isn’t moral or fair is going to be despised
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