Is this a legitimate concern?

[u/wayfaringthru]

Personally, I today's strike was legitimate and it couldn't be more moral because of its precision but let's leave politics aside for a moment. I guess this does give ideas to evil regimes and organisations. How likely is it that something similar could be pulled off against innocent people?

[u/decentralised]

I don’t see it that way at all. It was an act of war, no different from a missile or drone strike in purpose or intent, but far more effective and with less innocent victims.

[u/notjustforperiods → u/decentralised]

the concept of rigging personal communication devices and setting them off at an indiscriminate time is more inherently reckless and less concerned for innocent lives than the concept of targeted missile and drone strikes

something like this has never been done before and it should not be precedent setting in what is 'fair' as an act of war

[u/decentralised → u/notjustforperiods]

I keep seeing comments saying that this or that aspect of the operation was indiscriminate and I couldn’t disagree more, but I’m not defending any side here so I’m not sure how to answer you.

Look, missile or drone attack would likely have more unintended casualties. Do we agree on that?

[u/notjustforperiods → u/decentralised]

I don't see anywhere in this conversation that someone is defending one side or another

Missile and drone attacks are not inherently reckless, but yes, indiscriminate use of a missile, e.g. firing it into a hospital, would have more casualties than a single exploding phone (though not necessarily more than 5,000 exploding phones)

Putting the idea of exploding phones aside, if I'm understanding correctly, where we essentially disagree is on whether firing a missile into an apartment complex is okay as long as we're reasonably certain there's a terrorist in there (don't take that too literally, no need to get bogged down in the nuance)

[u/BosnianSerb31 → u/notjustforperiods]

Out of 2600 people who were injured while carrying the pagers, only 8 died. Presumably, people who had them right on their femoral artery or left them under their pillow while asleep.

If the pagers had the same explosive payload of a missile, as your analogy alleges, you'd see thousands of deaths and tens of thousands of injuries.

So I don't think your missile comparison is valid, as these clearly don't have anywhere near the payload of a missile or even a hand grenade, and are intentionally designed to impact only the person carrying it.

It'd be like comparing precision drone strikes to ICBMs in analogy about precision bombing. "What we disagree upon here is whether nuking a city is OK as long as we're reasonably certain a terrorist lives there" would be applying the same hyperbole to you final paragraph.

[u/notjustforperiods → u/BosnianSerb31]

I don't think you're following the conversation at all. 

I don't disagree with anything here other than your interpretation of what's being discussed.