No I didn’t hear him say “take out the families” last night but apparently said it before which I consider to be a reckless statement. We don’t intentionally kill innocent people but we should accept collateral death in wartime although we should always try to minimize that.
The fact there wasn’t a mongo fuss before might mean that people are understanding some implied context.
If there was less automatic gotcha towards Trump and more attempt to find out if he means something reasonable, we would have a lot less cases of our own hair on fire (if not also our pants).
If Ronald Reagan could “trust but verify” the USSR maybe we could do so to Trump?
That's a convenient fiction maintained to avoid the obvious legal issues. Does anybody think the bomb attacks on say Dresden, Tokyo, or Hiroshima weren't intended to kill innocent people? Is there any legal justification for shooting some security guard at a house in Pakistan other than the desire to kill the guy who hired him? How is launching a Hellfire missile into a farmhouse in Pakistan not an intentional effort to kill everyone inside, including people other than the desired target?
The reality is that we, as a society, sometimes decide that killing people in pursuit of our objectives is acceptable. And some of those people are innocent by any test. We should do such things as rarely as possible, for the obvious moral reasons, and because we don't like it when people on the other side do similar things to us.
I think that's what the U.S. is trying to do and Trump is criticizing Obama on that. He's a "carpet bomb them and let Allah sort them out" kind of guy.
I suppose that it hinges on the state of mind and biases of the listener, plus the context.
For me, the statement always referred to the collateral damage case, nor specifically targeting family.
Of course, I allow for the impossibility of perfection when having to speak tens of thousands of words, extemporaneously, daily, without the benefit of thinking through the perfect choice of words or phrases.
That gives ignorant opportunists running loose in FR free rein to infer statements in the worst possible way.
Makes them feel morally superior, doesn't it.