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Google Employees Resign in Protest Against Pentagon Contract (gizmodo.com)
Kate Conger, reporting for Gizmodo: It's been nearly three months since many Google employees -- and the public -- learned about the company's decision to provide artificial intelligence to a controversial military pilot program known as Project Maven, which aims to speed up analysis of drone footage by automatically classifying images of objects and people. Now, about a dozen Google employees are resigning in protest over the company's continued involvement in Maven.
The resigning employees' frustrations range from particular ethical concerns over the use of artificial intelligence in drone warfare to broader worries about Google's political decisions -- and the erosion of user trust that could result from these actions. Many of them have written accounts of their decisions to leave the company, and their stories have been gathered and shared in an internal document, the contents of which multiple sources have described to Gizmodo.
The resigning employees' frustrations range from particular ethical concerns over the use of artificial intelligence in drone warfare to broader worries about Google's political decisions -- and the erosion of user trust that could result from these actions. Many of them have written accounts of their decisions to leave the company, and their stories have been gathered and shared in an internal document, the contents of which multiple sources have described to Gizmodo.
before Google themselves are so entrenched in American government and policies that there will be assassinations attributed to them.
Good to see that some of the people are stand up against it.
they are happy to sell cloud services to even worse people
They were all in when it was a creepy private data mining operation, but do something to support the legitimate aims of government and defend the nation, and it goes against their precious principles.
We are creating a generation of sociopaths, who have inverted their priorities and have no notion of right or wrong.
Now they'll be a defense contractor like Boeing et al. While I can understand a company wanting to make money how does this line up with "Do no harm?"
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
I'd have a hard time employing folks who "publicly" resigned in protest. My reason is that they'd similarly judge my company, and bring the wrong type of attention to my company. EVERYONE asks, "so, why'd you quit?"
That said, this type of move shows passion and putting their money where their mouth is. I really admire their conviction. Good for them.
I personally think Google has lost their moral compass. Stuff I've read about SREs doing, in flagging "bad" people who visit, would be grounds for immediate dismissal as traditional companies. Maybe, someday, ad words stop subsidizing the Googlers who get to go off and play on cool stuff, and protest and stuff. Until then, this ad word supported fantasy land will continue.
Is resignation (where you will be replaced) the solution, or is slowing the project down with barely passable code while leaking details to the press a better solution? Read about what Wernher Heisenberg (the real one, not the one from Breaking Bad) may have done with the German atom bomb program.
At this time we may begin to wonder whether we have passed Peak Google. Now that the company is large enough to get itself tangled up in politics, people from all political persuasions are watching its every move and looking for things to get upset about. The privacy issue could also be Google's biggest systemic problem, raising distrust in the company similar to IBM and Microsoft before it. We know how this ends -- a long, slow decline.
Personally, I'm very happy with DuckDuckGo. In just a few years it went from completely-unusable to a perfectly fine Google alternative. And I certainly wouldn't trust my email to any server other than my own.
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While there are many classically liberal views I agree with, sometimes I think they just go too far. National defense is a critical industry for the survival of the country and, although the United States is not perfect and certain has its share of blame for tragedies in the world, global dominance by Russia or China would be far, far worse..
In national defense, we've been falling backward (in relation to Russia and China) for the last few decades. Our main battle tanks are two generations behind Russia's and their air defense systems are also greatly enhanced. Iran successfully took over one of our most sophisticated drones and captured in, a couple years ago, using electronic warfare... Although we have the F-22 and the F-35 jets, we are falling in most other areas and are even behind in some.
Also, the cost of war is very prohibitive for us as Congress requires subcontractors in virtually every state to fund any new project. Both potential enemies can easily outlast us in a protracted war, financially.
And of course there is that AI in combat is not only inevitable but moving ahead at a very fast pace in both China and Russia. Although U.S. services still require a human in the loop of any kill decision, Russia absolutely does not. They are allowing agent kill decisions by default. This isn't a should we are shouldn't be ethical issue. This is about survival.
Go back to your containment board (https://boards.4chan.org/pol/) and STAY THERE, racist, neo-fascist, neo-nazi asshole. You're even more destructive than religion.
I doubt they'll be blacklisted, but if they are, nothing wrong with quitting the industry and working for an entity that actually has a conscience. Do education/development work in poorer parts of the US with an NGO. Go back to school, get an M.D. or nursing degree. Actually help fellow humans or do good research.
Life's too short to work in the ad-tech or military murder industries for the rest of one's life.
I think their point is that a human should be behind any kills a drone makes.
You're more likely to be killed slipping in a bathtub or crossing the street than in a terrorist attack in the US. We grossly over-reacted after 9/11. What we should have done is blockaded, sanctioned, and embargoed Saudi Arabia, the source of funding for the perpetrators that caused 9/11. Would have been cheap AND effective, even if we'd have felt some pain as far as oil prices in the short run.
But no, we were just itching to use the toys that we didn't have a chance to use during the Cold War. We wasted a few trillion and made the world LESS safe.
All the CV will say, is choose to leave google, so they have great employablity. Agree they'll be replaced easierly though. Being in IT you can replace your employee or employer easierly.
I remember when Google launched and the company touted its motto "Don't be evil". I guess the employees believe assisting the military in its drone program is a form of evil; And, while some may complain that a dozen people quitting doesn't amount to a hill of beans, I give those employees one heck of a lot of credit for standing up for what they believe in in a way most of us will never know.
If they're related to this project, is that necessarily true?
I keep reading about a shortage in AI people that will take a few years to be met.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Emotions don't have to make sense.
They could just get a job at Apple. Apple has a clause in their terms of services against military use.
All top brass sees is maybe a 6 month setback hiring and training,
A 6 months delay before Skynet, I'll take it!
No, but seriously, even if their departure doesn't delay anything, they could just be happier going to work for someone else.
They obviously can't control what Google does, but they can at least control what they personally do as individuals. And just like Google can easily replace them, they can also easily replace their employer.
Allow me to explain this to those of you who don't get it: These people are 'quitting in protest' because they didn't sign up to work on weapons of war, and they have every right to quit over this because otherwise they're not living according to their own conscience. Having worked in the defense industry (by the way, what we worked on was training systems, not weapons systems; what we developed helped keep soldiers safe) it's far from the first time someone has made a decision like this, and in fact people who have objections to contributing to the development of deadly weapons of war very often make this clear when they're interviewing for a job. These people clearly did not forsee this and are now acting accordingly and do not deserve to be criticized for that.
..oh, and by the way: It's inevitable that the so-called 'AI' (inaptly named; is really not much more than 'pseudo-intelligence' at best) will make mistakes, and those mistakes will likely mean non-combatants becoming collateral damage. That's at the core of why they're quitting, and I for one don't blame them one bit.
I don't understand the objection to precision drone strikes.
Because it's a terrorist activity.
Seriously, can I be hired in place of one of those who left, probably the best job of their lives ? Over what ? A moronic principle. There is no company who can say they will not work with/for the government and/or military. Otherwise how will the government will spend the money, supposedly paid to $725 for single hammer or $2200 worth of toilet seats ? C'mon people. Be reasonable. Really,. if someone from google is looking for a replacement for one of their childish employees who left, I am here to replace. Just drop a response.
__________
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One man's stigma is another man's ideal qualification.
Thousands of employees resigned from their employer because of policies they don't agree with.
No news at 11 because this is just another day.
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1. AI and expert systems are going to be a standard in war regardless of what google does or doesn't do.
2. The US government is hardly the only power trying to integrate this tech into its military.
3. For all the largely LARPy ire at US foreign policy, what is the alternative hegemonic power you would prefer from the available contenders? Currently - Russia, China, maybe one of the Islamic countries or a coalition there of Pakistan/Turkey/Iran/etc. Of those which would you prefer to be the hegemonic power? Because Switzerland isn't a contender, sweethearts.
Given the above reality... What does protest quitting Google do?
Its meaningless virtue signaling. It accomplishes nothing productive. And even if it did slow or shut down the US development of AI enhanced weapons, that would only give one of the other major powers an advantage. And since literally every single one of those powers is if anything more questionable in its ethics regarding war... What are you really doing here?
I get it. We don't live in an ideal world. This world has war. We kill each other on occasion. But that isn't going to stop. Idealism is a sad substitute for sound foreign policy.
As the line goes "if you desire peace, prepare for war."
I desire peace. And I know that if I were sent into the fires of a war, I would want the best weapons my country could supply for me. I cannot therefore in good conscience frustrate the development or deployment of any equipment or programs for our people that I would want for myself in the same situation. I want to live. I want to live in peace and security. And the only way that is going to happen on this planet short of submitting to enslavement... is to be formidable.
By all means, refuse to work on Google's AI project. It is a free country. No one will force you to work where you do not wish to work. But it is meaningless.
The tech will get developed and become standard. Everyone knows this. Opposing it is futile.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
There is still a human there. Maven is just an object-recognition system, that highlights objects in (usually low-resolution) drone video feeds. For example, it'll identify whether the 20-pixel object in the back of a pickup truck is actually a goat or a machine gun. It's still a human who decides whether to actually launch an attack or not.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
The GP's post is just poorly disguised Millennial hate. You know, this young generation has all their values bass-ackwards, yadda yadda yadda ....
Anyway, now that we are in a state of perpetual war, we're going to need to find cheap effective ways to fight these wars. As we spiral down the path to our eventual irrelevancy on the World stage (Thanks Trump!), we are going to have to flatten the curve so that we can at least pay the Social Security and Medicare of the next couple of generations.
See, we have just passed the tipping point of a forever war and it will continue until we just can't afford it anymore. (Thanks again Trump! ) I'm just waiting for the Mullahs to declare some sort of Jihad against Trump - like blowing up Trump properties around the World all because of the moving of the US embassy to Jerusalem.
In the meantime, we can be part of the Military Industrial Complex but putting any savings we have into defense contractors - that's where the money is going to be.
And Google sees that.
Why did they quit?
Presumably because Google crossed a line for them on their personal moral compass. Might or might not be something you care about.
Did they think noone would step up and do it instead of them?
Why would that be a relevant consideration for them? The point is that THEY did not want to be a part of doing that job. They cannot control what others do. Other people do lots of jobs I don't want to do. When I've quit jobs the last thing I give a shit about is whether someone will take my place and do it for me since I don't control that. Furthermore if they work at Google they're probably pretty talented and well paid so it's not like they are stuck there if they don't want to be.
All top brass sees is maybe a 6 month setback hiring and training, and yeah that sucks, but that's not going to institute change.
No but quitting loudly and publicly sometimes has the effect of shaming the top brass into changing their behavior. No guarantee of course but doing nothing will definitely not change anything.
Yes. I think it's because they don't want to attack. Borders are relatively open. Weapons are readily available (if not guns, then cars or knives). Yet the number of terror attacks in the US is statistically tiny.
"Outback" hick. Wow! I've always wanted to visit Australia. But would I be a hick, or a bogan?
Do education/development work in poorer parts of the US with an NGO.
Any evidence they are doing anything like that?
Go back to school, get an M.D. or nursing degree.
They might do that, since it pays well. Maybe.
Life's too short to work in the ad-tech or military murder industries for the rest of one's life.
Except they were working happily in the ad-tech data abuse business. That didn't bother them at all.
My point is that you have employment choices in the US (or even abroad) if you're a human with a conscience.
Do you think that safety is because terrorists don't want to attack on U.S. soil?
The US response to 9/11 wasn't a deterrent to terrorists, it was a deterrent to living in a country that has resources the US wants control of. Given the levels of bullshit coming out of the US administration at the time, it was just a matter of time before they found an excuse.
Thanks for pointing that out. I should've RTFA.
blockaded, sanctioned, and embargoed Saudi Arabia
Until....when exactly? What would the end game of that be?
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
"You're even more destructive than religion."
Citation needed.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Until they were either completely bankrupt and unable to exert financial power outside their own borders (freeze foreign accounts as well) or regime change was facilitated.
That is primarily advertising BS designed to maximize the streams of new programmers that will work for peanuts in the hopes of getting it big. If Google were so dependent on a single programmer, they would be out of business by now.
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. . . since Google itself has actually acted in a moral fashion as regards refusing to give up the store to China, which Narus, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Apple have soooo willingly done so, ensuring the deaths and forced organ harvesting of too many Chinese individuals deemed to be enemies of the state due to their not following the CCP doctrine.
It's interesting that this is actually standard practice when it comes to intelligence or military applications. You're told when you sign up for any intelligence position is that if you have a moral issue, you first take it up with your superior, if that isn't satisfactory then you resign. It's also a difficult call too, imagine how many scientists felt during the development of the nuclear bomb.
I'm developing an algorithm to estimate the I.Q. of posters based on a single post. You start at 100 and lose 10 points for use of the word "snowflake" when referring to a person. You lose 5 more points for not being able to type an apostrophe.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
I guarantee you that would have resulted in a war....I doubt the outcome would have been any different than the current situation.
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
Harming one's legitimate enemies is not only not evil, but perfectly just and, indeed, noble.
People declare others to be their "enemies" for all sorts of idiotic and irrational reasons. Tribalism not the least among them. Just because you don't like someone doesn't make harming them a justifiable activity. I could not disagree more with your statement as it stands. There is nothing "noble" about harming anyone. Sometimes it is necessary and occasionally it is just. But noble? No.
At least it would have dealt with the source of the problem -- Saudi Arabia and its combination of crazy religious zealotry and free money from oil.
How about not having drone strikes at all. Stop helping to create terrorists by supporting terroristic states in the Middle East, and live our lives in peace.
We're trying to do that right now by withdrawing from any and all support from Iran - a huge sponsor of terror - and we're being castigated for it. So do we support them, or not?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Agreed.....but they aren't the only ones, you'd have to include the Iranians as well as Afghanistan.
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
Iran has no real fight with the US (other than blustering), nor does it sponsor attacks in the US. If anything, a strong Iran will help keep Saudi Arabia (the real problem) in check.
Iranians don't care much about the US (despite their bluster). They may be a threat to oil shipments (Strait of Hormuz) and to Israel. Israel is capable of defending itself. The solution to the oil shipment problem is energy independence, ideally through a large proportion of nuclear or renewables.
Afghanistan was made the way it was through US meddling in the 80s and Saudi funding. Cut the funding (see also: Saudi embargo) and the problem would be reduced without a land war in Asia... But frankly, we should have let Afghanistan alone in the 80s and let the Soviets do what they wanted. Afghanistan would likely have been better off under Communist rule than under the Taliban.
It's still a human who decides whether to actually launch an attack or not.
For now.
Self-driving cars also have a human operator for the time being.
is where I see this going. If you can Id good targets from pictures offline then it won't be long until you can do it in realtime. There's a world of difference between using AI to sell me McDonald's Cheeseburgers & BMWs and using it to kill people.
What's scary is you're having trouble with the difference (and if you are, so are other people). Even ignoring the fact that our drone program is anything but legitimate it ought to be obvious why someone who makes advertisements for a living wouldn't want to switch over to weapon's manufacture.
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I don't understand the objection to precision drone strikes. Would the objects prefer to just fire a missile in the general area and kill everyone in the vicinity? Would they prefer dumb drones that can't determine who the target is and kills the wrong people?
Yes, they would. You see, their real objection to the military has nothing to do with innocents being killed. They just hate the very idea of the military as a whole. Even if every single strike took out some horrible monster of a man, and didn't harm a single innocent, they would still be opposed to it. The problem, in that case, is that they would have no way to rationally voice their opposition, so they need civilian casualties. They need weddings being blown up; the more the better. It lets them rant and rave about how horrible the military is; anything which reduces the civilian body count runs contrary to their interests.
According to the article, only a dozen or so employees have resigned out a workforce of around 75,000+ employees. It's not that the employees' action isn't significant, but it's such a small number in the grand scheme of things, unless they are key managers or technical leads, it's hard to really say it will have much, if any, impact in the long run.
it's around $9 ($7 trillion in Iraq and $2 in Afghanistan). Of course, I'm not counting what we spend in the rest of the region.
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Other than regularly calling for the death of America, sponsoring terror including the USS Cole and other attacks on US citizens and property, and detaining US citizens on fake charges, yeah Iran is perfectly cool with the US!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Oh, and there's this call to bomb the new US embassy in Jerusalem with a $100,000 prize to the first one to bomb it...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Death to America = bluster, and more bluster.
Cole was an attack against a military target, not civilian terrorism within the US. Frankly, it could have been avoided if the US Navy was used for domestic defense, not parked in places where it's not welcome.
Why did we spend good money on moving it, again? Since when is appeasing religious crazies in Israel (and their Christian Right loony supporters in the US) a matter of importance?
It is possible the the same Google employees resigning now sat tight as Google continues to read users email to build out their profiles and when it was shown by CitizenFour that Google was selling back door access to various agencies.
And really has not much to do with PGP either, it is about insane HTML integration in email software that can leak data if external resources are loaded automatically and your email is decrypted automatically. If you have either of these, your security has gone out of the window long before the present issue was discovered. Security is not free, it takes effort. Also apparently some mailers tell PGP to use insecure encryption.
Bottom line, a sane set-up that only renders HTML, but does not fetch/execute anything and uses the PGP/GnuPG is safe from this. And yes, you should definitely use PGP/GnuPG, despite what some people say.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Ai is not being used to make life or death decisions, man in the loop has long been a requirement for use of force. Google's Ai is intelligently sorting millions of images from drones presenting that data, and choosing which areas to focus surveillance on.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
No one does what the U.S. does. Russia, China, bumbfuckistan don't have a drone murder program blowing up innocent people for completely bullshit reasons. And the terrorist countries that come the closest to doing so, Saudi Arabia and Israel, are your buddies using your weapons.
You even know that the entire defense budget of Russia is half the size of the last increase to the American Imperial budget? We're talking 45 billion dollars a year next to over a trillion.
The United States could dismiss the entire Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force tomorrow and have more than enough for it's actual defense needs. You even seen a globe, bro? The United States is surrounded by the world's largest oceans and two friendly allies. You've faced one invasion in your entire history, 200 years ago, and for a war you started.
Russia's entire defense budget is $45 billion dollars. You spend over a trillion. The United States doesn't need to defend itself from the rest of the world. The rest of the world needs to defend itself from the United States.
It's not Russia occupying Europe with 30 installations in Germany alone. It's not China starting wars for bullshit reasons and assassinating people on the other side of the planet from it. It's all you. It's only you, and your terrorist allies Saudi Arabia and Israel.
Those weren't accidents. Like all of the war crimes committed by Bush, then by Obama and now Trump, they were deliberate choices. Get the fuck out of countries that have never done a thing to you and stop your campaigns of mass terrorism. Which is what drones are.
Maybe it would be a good idea to let Google help process the footage to see who and what got blown up?
Seriously though, the data is already there, now suddenly it's a big moral dilemma to process it and understand what's going on?
Reminds me of the movie Real Genius. Its all fun and lasers until someone brings out the phase conjugate target tracking system.
Used to keep people friendly until they were large enough to show their true colors. Corporations lie and they lie about important stuff. So this is not really a surprise at all.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
..oh, and never mind the fact that these so-called 'AIs' ...will inevitably make mistakes, which will lead to non-combatants being targeted and killed.
That's not the thing to worry about. What you need to ask is whether this system will result in fewer mistakes than whatever system they currently have. Fewer mistakes means fewer innocents killed which is something everyone should want. It's true that the best way to do this is to stop shooting but, so long as someone is shooting, making sure they have the best possible support to make the right decision about whom to shoot is not a bad thing.
Its meaningless virtue signaling
No. It's called having a moral compass, you stupid, stupid fuck. They're giving up lucrative jobs so that they don't participate in building weapons. It's the exact opposite of "virtue signalling". They're putting their money where their mouths are.
You're right. They're free to work where ever they want to, but to call them phonies for quitting a weapon company makes you a complete and total asshole. You would have happily been a Nazi because, "hey, opposing them is futile.". If the world were made up of people who all agreed with you, the human race would be extinct, already.
Go fuck yourself.
I don't respond to AC's.
You can ask that religious crazy named Hillary Clinton about why we should put the embassy in the capitol of the country.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
How about blowing up our embassy in 1998? is that a military target, not a civilian terror attack on US soil?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
we've got the people, we're just not using them effectively. That said, for decades our military has been a cheap place to train pilots and engineers, hence the reason for 'up and out'. It's remarkably difficult to get Americans to pay for roads and schools but defense (read:war)? They'll blow money all day long.
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The linked article says Google is basically a contractor helping with configuration & setup of open source tools; and even if they backed out the same project could be done by other companies too.
... which won't just lead to an ineffective system, it will only mean more overspending until the military does have the capabilities it wants.
If this is true, then I find it hard to be so upset at them. Agreed, Google's level of expertise in setting up ML systems is far more advanced than most smaller companies, and probably a bit ahead of even their biggest competitors. However, its basically an installation that would happen with or without them; and more likely to be misconfigured if someone else is the military vendor
So, why not let the ML experts create a usable system which will only save some time and money over them turning down the wad of military cash and seeing someone else get it? Of course, I'm assuming that the claim of everything used being existing open source is actually true.
Sadly, all American politicians have to pander to religious shitheels who are willing to start a war to prove a point.
At least it would have dealt with the source of the problem -- Saudi Arabia and its combination of crazy religious zealotry and free money from oil.
Regime change/revolution/decay of government didn't have that affect when we overthrew the governments of Afghanistan and Iraq. Libya turned out pretty badly, and Egypt hasn't been in a great state either.
Slashdot was never a 'Tech' board nor ever meant to be one. 'Tech' is a sub-category of the rather gregarious interests of the nerd subculture. It is a topic, among many others' that is of interest.
You pinks and vanilla mainstreamers can get kinda annoying with your assumptions. Yes, CS was a worthy 'career choice' and now you're in IT and doing fine. Keep outta the way with your assumptions.
we'll have fully automated kill bots
and they will be in the employ of the 1% to keep us off their lawns
At the end of the day, all these people gave up is their jobs with Google. They're not going to stop the ball rolling with this act. There's plenty of people with less-than-perfect moral compass that'll fill those shoes.
Commendable, but I think it'd been much braver to keep your job and fight against this from the inside. Quitting is just quitting.
If it were a polygamous society, the women would be able to have multiple husbands as well. Now for a 50/50 society every man and every woman has the same potential number of partners.
The problem is that women have less rights than men.
It was lucky you came along to explain their 'real objection' to the military. You really showed that strawman who's boss.
Another side of the argument, are the people than think that wars should be messy. It should be a difficult choice whether or not to start one. Save them for the big stuff. Once they become too clean they become too easy to justify they become too easy to start. Yea sure take out that horrible monster of a man. And once they are all gone, do you take out the bad monsters of a man, and then the monster of a man, and then the bad man, etc. Little Rocket Man causing trouble again, assassinate. Putin getting into your business, assassinate. Kim dotcom downloading all your movies, assassinate. People in other countries telling Americans how to vote, assassinate. People in other countries telling you things you'd rather not hear, assassinate.
But I totally kicked the shit out of my strawman.
Hillary's flunky at State is on video - in front of banners for western oil companies - bragging about how the U.S. spent five biiiiiiiilion dollars to "bring Ukraine the future it deserves". And then you melting snowflakes complain about a few thousand dollars in online ads from a Twitter troll farm changing your election.
So even if the crap about Russia invading Ukraine wasn't just bs pulled out of the CIA's ass, it would be infinitely more justified than any American "intervention" you can name. As for China, it's always laid claim to those islands - and who are you to dispute that with them? You're free to tell the whole world what to do, but China can't even play around in its Gulf of Mexico? Get the fuck outta here.
No. You were born with your head in a warm, dark place, given the fact that the U.S. has overthrown dozens of democracies since WWII, is responsible for tens of millions of deaths, and supports three quarters of the world's dictatorships. Including the worst one, Saudi Arabia.
Team: Recently a man advised me that just because someone CAN eat two whoppers; that doesnâ(TM)t mean they SHOULD eat two whoppers. I think the same adage fits here. Just because we CAN be vitriolic, angry, and crude in posts; doesnâ(TM)t mean we SHOULD do so. Iâ(TM)m in the Army so Iâ(TM)m no fan of war. Itâ(TM)s awful, ugly, and yes often innocent people die. Itâ(TM)s horrible. HOwever, there are a lot of bad folks out there who need bullets in their foreheads and MAVEN may ( emphasis on may) improve the process. Itâ(TM)s a very dangerous world as all the current and former military on this thread likely already know. Thnx and hugz, John
And definitely, neither do you.
That is a recycling of the cold war 'missle gap' arguement.
just a reminder: Going after Bin Laden in Afghanistan was supported by many countries in the world and was due to the attacks. Irak has nothing to do with any of it.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
your a troll
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Well, that should free up some space in the cry room... These silicon valley types that work for fascist companies like fakedouche, giggle, snapcrap, etc. are the biggest bunch of hypocrites and self-serving asshats I have ever had the displeasure to encounter. You snowflake fucks will be the first against the wall.
If you get all bent out shape that 'snowflakes' are doing their thing, that really doesn't affect you in the slightest. Do you not think that makes you a snowflake? I would say it does so fuckoff snowflake and go moan to someone who cares. Maybe try childline.
Wanna buy a shirt?
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Another side of the argument, are the people than think that wars should be messy.
That's not "another side"; that's exactly the dipshits I was talking about. And you called it a strawman.
12 people quit, and Google didn't even notice.
I'm sure they've had at least 12 people quit over cafeteria menu choices, where's the story about that?
So your claim is that opponents of the 2nd should get a pass because they're stupid? Just because they can't read history, doesn't mean they're correct.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
We have _dealt_ with the source of the problem, we arranged the Sunni/Shia war to get rolling again.
If it's played right, that war will simmer on, until oil is irrelevant and the whole arab world is back to starving.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Enable Sunni/Shia war to restart...worked great.
We knew exactly what would happen, Cheney said as much when we didn't kill Saddam during the first Iraq war.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I bet they had an 'engineer' job title, but you're right.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
While it is useful to define groups of people by common characteristics and then describe behaviour of the group, to assume that any member of the group shares equally all the characteristics of the definition or the behaviour can be erroneous.
I'm happy to criticise the inequity of some aspects of some Muslim societies. I'm probably left enough in a lot of my opinions that I'd fall into your characterisation of 'leftist' and/or 'Democrat' although neither are a good fit (roughly, I'm socially far left, economically centrist (ish), but have some odd opinions that would normally place me socially far right, for eg on some issues).
If you've taken criticism of a group and applied it to an individual, you're falling for one of the -ism errors and may well have been fairly criticised for being racist. If you've criticised a group, fairly, and distinguish between other examples and/or individuals within that group then the accusation may have been unfair.
But frankly, very few people are using the term 'racist/sexist/foo-ist' accurately and given your use of 'Democrat' and 'leftist' it sounds like you're just as guilty of confusing generalisations and individuals. The map is not the territory. Abstraction is great so long as you remember that's what you're doing.
How about instead of perpetuating the problem, you stop calling people 'Democrats' and 'leftists' and criticise the behaviour of the individuals you encounter?
Wanting wars to be messy and 'hating the very idea of the military as a whole' is in no way the same thing? Why would you think it was?