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Comment by v_lisivka | Hacker News Reader

Are you sure you want to be unarmed in front of enemy just because someone else may use your weapons unresponsively?

Look at Ukraine then. Ukraine exchanged their nuclear arsenal for promises of safety by Russia, Britain, and USA. Is Ukraine safe place now?

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Helping a military that is behaving immorally and being unarmed are also not the only options. If more and more people refuse to work for the military on these grounds, this may in the long run put some pressure on them to change their behavior. I do admit that this is hopelessly idealistic though and I don't expect this to happen anytime soon.

Can I ask question first about "immorally" to be sure I understand you correctly?

There are few different kind of morality in circulation, so I need to know about what morality we are talking.

Liberal morale is used at the West: every person life costs infinity, so we cannot exchange life of a person to save another person or even infinity of persons.

However, at war or in military, Liberal morale can't be used, because Liberal morale forbids to send soldiers to protect civilians: life of a soldier has same cost as lives of all civilians in the country. So every military in the world uses Utilitarian morale, where each life has a cost. In most countries, order of life cost is: our politics > our commandment > our civilians > other civilians > our soldiers > enemies, and goal is to minimize loses. In some countries order can be different, e.g. religious leaders can send civilians to kill other civilians or civilians can be used to protect soldiers (e.g. famous speech of V.V. Putin: «We will put our soldier behind their (Ukrainian) mothers and children. Not in front but behind. Will they shoot at them? At their own mothers and children?» https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoQXvPsBBn8 ), and so on.

So my question is: to which kind of morality you are referring when you are talking about "immorality"?

I didn't have a concrete moral framework in mind, but I was thinking of a few baseline rules that should hold in most sensible systems, such as not bombing hospitals (like what happened with that hospital in Syria a while ago), not killing civilians without due process in countries where there is formally no state of war (drone strikes in Pakistan and other countries), not starting wars of aggression based on falsified intelligence (Iraq, Vietnam), investing reasonable amounts effort to avoid harm to non-combatants (that "Collateral Murder" video, US support for the Saudis' actions in Yemen, drone strikes based on just cellphone signals); all of these points are arguably features of many different moral systems and should be much less controversial than the dilemmas you bring up. I'm not a lawyer, but as far as I know to they are all standard components of rules of engagement (like the Geneva Convention).

Also, all of these have been repeatedly violated by the US military or its contractors, making me more hesitant to want to help them, even under the assumption that they are necessary to protect our liberal societies from other regimes.

In general, I agree with you that army should not do that. However, enemy rarely tries to help to achieve that, i.e. they are not putting markers "we are soldiers, shoot us" at their positions. So goal of typical army is to minimize loses, not to avoid them completely, because risk is non-zero for every shot.

> such as not bombing hospitals (like what happened with that hospital in Syria a while ago)

It looks like error (one bomb hit territory near to hospital), not a precise strike. In contrasts, Russians (I will Russian-Ukraine war as example, because I know it better) are shooting civilians pretty often. I had Uber-drive with driver which served in Augustinian during USSR invasion. He told me that in Augustinian they completely destroyed nearest civilian village with all habitats when one of them was killed during mission. AFAIK, Russian army is not changed much since then.

> not killing civilians without due process in countries where there is formally no state of war (drone strikes in Pakistan and other countries)

Completely agreed. We(Ukraine) are victims of hybrid war too.

> not starting wars of aggression based on falsified intelligence (Iraq, Vietnam)

Intelligence was not falsified in case of Iraq: chemical weapons are just moved to Syria few months prior to invasion.

Not sure about Vietnam, but I know a bit about war in Vietnam from USSR side, and it not good. Not interested much in the topic.

> In general, I agree with you that army should not do that. However, enemy rarely tries to help to achieve that, i.e. they are not putting markers "we are soldiers, shoot us" at their positions. So goal of typical army is to minimize loses, not to avoid them completely, because risk is non-zero for every shot.

I agree with that. This is why I was only asking for "reasonable effort" to try to avoid this. I realize this is vague, but there are some cases that are a clear violation.

> It looks like error (one bomb hit territory near to hospital), not a precise strike.

In the incident I was referring to (but can't find a link to for some reason right now), it was a sustained attack that didn't even stop for 30 minutes after the US forces were informed that it was in fact a hospital. I'm willing to attribute that to negligence and organizational dysfunction rather than malice, but even then this indicates a lack of concern for civilians and medical infrastructure in the country.

Another case was the bombing of that infant formula factory in the first gulf war that was, as far as I remember, also claimed to be a chemical weapons site, even though the administration knew this not to be the case at the time. I don't remember many details on this though.

EDIT: Okay, seems I was mistaken about this, they didn't know this to be false, but seemingly had no strong evidence to support their claims either. Here are some other examples of US strikes on civilian targets based on very flimsy evidence though, along with details on that original hospital case I brought up:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article43079.htm

> Intelligence was not falsified in case of Iraq: chemical weapons are just moved to Syria few months prior to invasion.

This is the first time I've heard this claim. Most Western media reported that there was no intelligence to support the WMD claim at the time. e.g:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/jul/09/usa.iraq2

> Not sure about Vietnam, but I know a bit about war in Vietnam from USSR side, and it not good. Not interested much in the topic.

In this case the administration lied about the reasons for the war to the general public (this was revealed by the Pentagon Papers).

I know very little about the war in Ukraine, so I'll take your word for it. My main argument was that the US military in particular (since this is the one most relevant to Silicon Valley) has a history of this type of behavior that significantly complicates the point of military research to keep us safe.

> This is the first time I've heard this claim. Most Western media reported that there was no intelligence to support the WMD claim at the time. e.g:

Read this interview: http://www.foxnews.com/story/2006/01/26/exclusive-former-top...

SADA: Well, up to the year 2002, 2002, in summer, they were in Iraq. And after that, when Saddam realized that the inspectors are coming on the first of November and the Americans are coming, so he took the advantage of a natural disaster happened in Syria, a dam was broken. So he — he announced to the world that he is going to make an air bridge...

> My main argument was that the US military in particular (since this is the one most relevant to Silicon Valley) has a history of this type of behavior that significantly complicates the point of military research to keep us safe.

Sorry to inform you, but army sometimes shooting even their own civilians. For example, in 2001 Russians used civil plane to fly over EU border to grab some intelligence. They turned off air responder on the plane to hide that. They decided that nobody will try to shot civil passenger plane, even if it doesn't respond. Well, nobody except Russia. Russian air defense battery shot plane with their own passengers without any doubt, even without call to commandment. Then they blamed Ukraine for that. Shit happens.

>Intelligence was not falsified in case of Iraq: chemical weapons are just moved to Syria few months prior to invasion.

Now YOU are falsifying intelligence.

You can't win an argument by falsifying intelligence and not being interested in topics that contradict your falsifications.

Iraq war 'waged on false intelligence': https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/jul/09/usa.iraq2

And in case you only find Russian news interesting: How Distorted Intelligence Dragged US Into Vietnam War 53 Years Ago: https://sputniknews.com/politics/201708021056125095-us-vietn...

«SADA: They were moved by air and by ground, 56 sorties by jumbo, 747, and 27 were moved, after they were converted to cargo aircraft, they were moved to Syria.»

http://www.foxnews.com/story/2006/01/26/exclusive-former-top...

I newer read Russian news, because they are prepared and targeted. :-) I read memories (many of them were released uncensored shortly after fall of USSR), and I also listened to stories told us by our teachers, ex-officers of USSR army.

Speaking as someone in the military: yes. There are a great many weapons i dont want. Because by me (and everyone else in uniform) not wanting them they dont exist. Top of that list: plastic schrapnel. I dont want. It isnt manufactured. Therefore even ISIS cannot use it.

Also on the list: direct-energy blinding weapons design to destroy the retina. Easily biult, but happily not a thing.

> Also on the list: direct-energy blinding weapons design to destroy the retina. Easily biult, but happily not a thing.

They are used by Russians against Ukrainian snipers. Few snipers are already blind at working eye.

Ive seen public reports about this sort of thing. It is hard to verify exactly what is being employed. Sounds like consumer-type lasers, not purpose-biult stuff.

I think all he's saying is, that until he feels his own country resolves to use its arsenal in a somewhat responsible manner (he gave some pretty good examples to the contrary), he doesn't think you can make weapons for them in good conscience.

Yep. But I'm asking about consequences. Ukraine was very poor after collapse of socialism, so USA had worries that Ukraine may sold or lost some of their nuclear bombs, ballistic missiles, or supersonic bomber to an enemy of USA, so USA (with Russia and Britain) promised security to Ukraine in exchange of promise to demolish all that, and to stop development of any new weapons which can harm USA. So we dropped our weapons and stayed unarmed in front of Russia. I personally, counter-attacked Russians with pneumatic pistole, which I then exchanged on field to hand-made grenade, so other few, with real hunter riffles, had chance against AK's and BTR.

Is my example bad for you?

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