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I don’t know, is there not a difference between carpet bombing a shopping mall that a target is in and killing a thousand civilians and precision droning his car, killing the occupants of his vehicle and an unfortunate motorcyclist nearby, but otherwise nobody else? I think the CIA would probably fairly argue there is.
Has the CIA done this in the war on terror? No, it hasn't. You know who has done this? Insurgents and Mossad.
The US was apparently not even in the loop on this operation, also making this another demonstration of Israel's insolence. The CIA would not have approved of this attack and it has not done similar attacks in its own War on Terror.
I would vastly prefer that it did. I would much, much rather they attempt to eliminate a terrorist with a half-ounce of high explosive than a twenty-five-pound warhead. I would much rather they deliver that explosive by secreting it into a target's personal items, rather than aiming a hundred-pound supersonic missile at some part of a building from ten miles away through a low-resolution thermal camera.
You are consistently playing language games. These aren't "IEDs" any more than a hand grenade is an IED. This isn't "terrorism" any more than any other state-sanctioned use of force is terrorism. The CIA probably would not have approved of this attack, but that is not to the CIA's credit; they've routinely approved of far, far more objectionable attacks. This is doubtless very inconvenient for the US government, and is a great example of why we should not be involved in any of this, but that doesn't actually make the attack itself objectionable on any fundamental level.
The purpose of an IED is to deceive people into thinking a bomb is an ordinary object. A hand grenade is a weapon of conventional warfare. Why are you so loathe to admit that this is obviously an IED, and not a hand grenade? Why detach yourself so much from reality? To pretend like this is just another chapter in the military history of hand grenades is just laughable. It's unprecedented.
No, the purpose of an IED is to have an explosive device, hence the majority of the name.
Improvision is because of a limitation of parts, not a preference. Hence why IED-utilizers prefer to use military-grade explosives when they have access to them rather than make their own explosive mixtures, and why belligerants per to use non-improved EDs when they have access to those.
The purpose of boobytraps is to conceal danger in seemingly harmless things. But boobytraps and IEDs are different things, and when given an option most boobytraps will use non-improvised explosive devices to get the booby. Boobytrapping is the method of employment, not the thing being employed, just as IED refers to the thing, not the method of employment.
If you want to condemn the Israelis for boobytrapping Hezbollah gear, sure, go ahead. But they didn't use an IED to do it.
The term came into existence to describe the bombs made by the IRA, which was based on a preference of presentation. Things like suitcases boobytrapped to explode were what gave IED its name. A boobytrapped pager with hidden explosives is obviously comparable to a boobytrapped suitcase with hidden explosives, and the name "IED" was made to describe those things as opposed to conventional weapons.
This isn't just a wordplay either- the US and CIA haven't done anything like this. The IRA has. The insurgency in Iraq has. It obviously falls under that category of mode of waging warfare.
The term as an acronym came into modern parlance to describe the American experience in Iraq, where repurposed artillery shells and similar munitions were turned were used as makeshift mines along roads rather than to sabotaging utility items. This occured because the Americans love their acronyms and their media and cultural connotations are what set the standard for modern Americanized audiences, most of whom have no clue about IRA boobytrapping slang beyond reverse-applying the Americanized concept backwards.
I believe the technical term is 'lol.'
No, the acronym was created by the British to describe explosive-rigged boobytraps like suitcases created by the IRA. This is obviously an IED, why not just admit it? The Iraq insurgency is the other most notable case of this being used in warfare, but now Mossad has adopted it as well.
Unfortunately for the British, they stopped particularly penetrating the American public consciousness well before then, and so the American political understanding formed in the 21st century is the framework 21st century modern audiences understand.
Because it is not an improvised device, and insisting on calling it such for moral opprobrium makes you sound sillier than usual.
The Iraqi insurgency largely did not use their IEDs as utility-device boobytraps, but as victim or trigger-activated mines. This was echoed by the IEDs of Afghanistan, where quality and mechanical improvision for construction was even more commonly known, and subtle disguising even less present, as well as the IEDs in Syria and Yemen and other modern conflicts. Which is why the connotation of IED in the 2020s is of an improvised explosive jury-rigged into a function it was not intended for, as opposed to a purpose-built explosive sneakily hidden to look like a common-use item. The boobytraps of the Iraq War cultural understanding is things like dead animals on the sides of roads, which is the same thing that would have been applied to purpose-made military explosives, further driving a distinction between a boobytrap as a method and an IED as a device.
Disguising lethal measures as common-use items is a recognized form of western spycraft, ranging from murder-umbrellas to lipstick pistols. Heck, you can literally read a CIA history piece on disguising bombs as coal dating to the American Civil War.
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The CIA isn’t facing an enemy which has a viable, if unlikely, path to destroying the US (it doesn’t handle nuclear policy between great powers).
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