Neutalizing North Vietnamese. There was a war on...
Read the story in order to understand it better. War does not justify murder. Do you know what a non-combatant is ? Soldiers should not be killing non-combatants to put down an insurgency without verifying that each non-combatant is actually a part of said insurgency.
Drone attacks, ok? But against whom?
Once again, read the story. Your own question is the key - against whom ? It's a case of very questionable justification.
Does Chechnya ring any bells for you?
Chechnya does not provide justification for US drone attacks.
From CFR...
Philip Alston, the former UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions, condemns the U.S. claims of self-defense as overly expansive, stating that "if other states were to claim the broad-based authority that the United States does, to kill people anywhere, anytime, the result would be chaos." Waxman says that while the strike on bin Laden would normally be a violation of state sovereignty, the U.S. government "is well within its rights" to use force on foreign soil without consent if there is an overriding necessity of self-defense.
CFR national security expert John B. Bellinger says the law is in need of a significant update. "The 2001 AUMF is more than ten years old now and getting a little long in the tooth--still tied to the use of force against the people who planned, committed, and or aided those involved in 9/11," he says. "The farther we get from [targeting] al-Qaeda [e.g., al-Shabaab in Somalia], the harder it is to squeeze [those operations] into the AUMF."
Meanwhile, among about a third of the Iranians, the words "Death to America" are like pure poetry.
That's not a valid cause for initiating war.
Who's side are you on? Pick one.
My loyalties are to God, country and family, in that order.
I've simply stopped listening to war mongers. I was a neocon, then I found out that I was being played for a fool.
I wholeheartedly suggest this guy's writings, there are also youtube videos of interviews with him that are very interesting. In order to really appreciate them, you have to read up on the Hoover Institution's roots. (It's so amazing that so many people just ridicule this info, dismiss it, and go on rah ! rah ! for their politicians).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony_C._Sutton
There is a lot more info out there from various sources. Most of it is unverfiable or quackery. But here and there are specific facts that force the honest reader to some very uncomfortable conclusions.
For instance, I had come across a statement that FDR's grandfather was a drug lord. Well, let's looky for some corroboration, but not from some ultra-right-wing website, or they'll say it's a wacky conspiracy theory. Let's look ere:
http://www.nytimes.com/1997/06/28/opinion/the-opium-war-s-secret-history.html
From NYTimes:
"Along with the slave trade, the traffic in opium was the dirty underside of an evolving global trading economy. In America as in Europe, pretty much everything was deemed fair in the pursuit of profits. Such was the outlook at Russell & Company, a Boston concern whose clipper ships made it the leader in the lucrative American trade in Chinese tea and silk.
In 1823 a 24-year-old Yankee, Warren Delano, sailed to Canton, where he did so well that within seven years he was a senior partner in Russell & Company. Delano's problem, as with all traders, European and American, was that China had much to sell but declined to buy. The Manchu emperors believed that the Middle Kingdom already possessed everything worth having, and hence needed no barbarian manufactures."
There is history that is omitted from schools and public discourse as much as possible. Occasionally a quick news article here or there, only mostly read by people who already know or don't care. The rubes like me are kept in the dark as much as possible.
You are so BACKWARDS.
Read the story in order to understand it better.
It is you who does not understand. I know "the story" well enough -- but the sort of things you continue to harp upon are still not enough for me to in knee-jerk response, back the Russians.
Other stuff, like:
Chechnya does not provide justification for US drone attacks.
is so messed up. The reality was war being waged on Islamic militants, both in Chechnya and in drone attacks in Pakistan.
But nice way to go muddying the waters there, backwards boy.
Though it matters only little (if any) now, before G.W. Bush sent U.S. troops into Afghanistan, I wrote him a letter, begging him to not do it. Ha! like it would have mattered, but I wrote it anyway, keeping it short, focusing on how in the end, it would engender more hatreds than it would remove.
I could have gone into how the Clinton Admin had totally ignored Afghanistan after the Soviets had pulled out -- and how we (the US) were probably on the wrong side of things in helping the "mujahedin" previous to that...
But why did we oppose Russian efforts there? Was it--our own fears that they would be able to force compliance in Afghanistan enough to link up with Pakistan --and get the warm water port they had always been seeking, while gaining ground and [Pakistani or Iranian] allies to eventually war on the U.S.? Like I said...fears. But not entirely unfounded, perhaps. The cold war was still on, and the Soviet Union had yet to fall...
I considered telling G.W. we should have first apologized to the Russians (Russians at that time -- no longer necessarily 'Soviet') for "Charlie Wilson's war" which helped lead to the deaths of many Russian soldiers (even though they, the Russians went there to make war, on their own, in the first place) --- then after honest and forthright assessment of Islamic extremist threats to civilization in general, including themselves, invite them to help us clean the place out, and subdue it once and for all.
But that would have sounded bizarre at the time. How strange does it sound now, in hindsight -- that is if one could get around other considerations that could pop up in this idea of having re-invited the former Soviets back to Afghanistan about ten years ago -- for we would have been setting stage for what we previously thought we didn't want, and would need to trust that an Islamic card would not be played against us, in the future.
What did we end up attempting as "mission" in Afghanistan, but to subdue the basest instincts there among Islamists who seek nothing other than world-wide Sharia Law, and will continue to harbor, breed, and give refuge for the sort of "world" Islamists who --- if they can get their hands on nuclear weapons, will likely use those against population centers anywhere in the world, including the U.S.?
Moscow is not immune from Islamic crazy-threat, but they have to play their own game of survival as best as they can see too -- which I certainly hope does not end up with any thinking along lines that they and the world would be better off without the United States. YOU seem to keep going that direction, though.
And you tell me I need 'understand it better'? while showing me info going into the morality/immorality of targeted killings of non-State combatants?
OH REALLY?!?