Google Employees Protest Work on Censored Search Engine for China
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Then, there's the PR disaster that's bound to come up once it gets official. In a single move, Google would be conveying how far it has moved from its foundational values. I fail to see how this would be a net positive for the company.
Consumer activism and job shaming is a moot effort. Useless.
What have they ever accomplished?
The only way to make a difference here is by standing together.
Maaybe. I'm not sure how this breaks down actually. Obviously Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google (and probably Twitter and a few others) are competing over one pool of candidates. But that that really/fully overlap with the pool that Apple and Microsoft are competing over? But as long as people are beating down the door to get in and look mainly at the free food and massages rather than the "big picture" why would they worry?
Revenue.
>Then, there's the PR disaster that's bound to come up once it gets official.
Does the public care about privacy? Does the public understand or care about China's firewall? Does the public have an attention span long enough to ruin Google's reputation?
Does the public care about anyone in China's privacy?
The answer is certainly “yes”. There’s a difference between caring and having any power to do anything about it.
It’s time to move on from Consumer activism. This nonsense of blaming people for their purchasing decisions is so rotten and useless. Judging others this way requires vain assumptions and we can do so much better.
> Does the public have an attention span long enough to ruin Google's reputation?
is a resounding ‘no’ to me right now. It is as if these days many people have the same attitude you do, wanting someone else to do the legwork to bring societal change. That’s a good way to wind up with totalitarianism, and that’s how you end up with a president for life dictating what information citizens can and cannot consume.
‘Consumer activism’ is, in so many words, not activism. It describes the effort of working towards greater change through purchasing decisions. It’s a liberal rationalization common in capitalist societies that fails to account for the systemic limitations of the consumer voice. The issues with it are many, but I’ll list a few:
- It’s dependent on a person’s spending power, which is dependent on their capital wealth, which is dependent on their endorsement of the system as a whole.
- It shames those in poverty who cannot afford to participate and generates greater class divide.
- It relies on the transparency of the business entities to definite itself. If Google doesn’t tell us how evil it is, we cannot know the importance of avoiding their services.
- It relies on the media to expose misgivings, but the media relies on the misgivers to pay their bills. You get the point.
- It places a burden on the well-meaning by insisting they deny opportunities available to their competitors.
- It pits individuals against one another, undermining the solidarity needed for lasting change.
I think GP was downvoted because he criticized consumer activism and not just what he meant to criticize: Making change by purchasing decisions. I've generally switched to his perspective. For about a decade I felt (and acted) more like you. That experience taught me how poor a strategy it is. The success stories via boycotts are a fairly small minority. Most attempts at change via boycotts fail. It's incredibly hard even to start one.
A lot of shaming is involved, and it rarely works. People don't like to feel ashamed. As he said in his response to you, it does quickly degrade to infighting amongst consumers and a lot of energy is wasted there that could be used in alternative strategies.
It requires people to be very knowledgeable, and I saw mostly failures even amongst highly educated folks. To understand an issue, connect all the dots, etc takes a lot of effort. Most people want someone else (government agency, consumer watchdog, etc) to do all the work.
That's not to say broad media campaigns are a bad idea - I think they are necessary. But much more often than not, companies will win on the purchasing decisions battle.
Yes, but the there is a lot of ignorance and misinformation. I have faith that the public at large will eventually come to grips the surrounding issues.
We pay attention to the big ticket events shown to us by the media (Tianamen Square, the occasional artist, etc.), but I seriously doubt very many people are concerned with the average person over there, since there's no easy way to package that up for a tweet.
I mean, I'd like them to be able to have it, but I have literally zero impact on any of those discussions. Since I can't really do anything about it, I don't fret about it.
Most are probably wealthy, to the point they don't really need to work. All of them can figure out how to covertly contact journalists. And at least a few of them are starting to have qualms about the negative consequences of industry ignoring the social implications in pursuit of profit.
Well that's just not true.
> is not solely in the purview of Google's flawless hiring system
Well that's not what was asserted at all.
> [...] have been created by many not-a-stanford-degree-toting individual
And neither was that.
PS: However, when what you say is literally wrong I don’t think it deserves a detailed response.
"PS:" Since we're critiquing responses, your initial response should have never existed. It provided nothing of value to the conversation. Odd that you would provide assessment of other's comments... but thank you.
Might != Must. I would happy let honest confusion slide, but you seem to be having trouble using the English language ;0
PS: Now, if you want to elevate the conversion avoid saying dumb things that get dumb responses. Sure, you can continue to whine, but don't expect to get any respect that way.
Edit: oh, and here you go, bozo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_law
Truly, a glorious use of everyone's time.
> Well that's just not true.
Is not an argument. When you say nothing of value their is nothing to respond to.
My bad, I was assuming this was reasonably civil just snarky. But, I guess that’s not ok.
I have been working at one of the FAANGs in SV for almost 15 years and no, this is absolutely not right. Only less than 5% of my colleagues "don't need to work". A lot of smart people I know would happily work for Google even after it goes ahead with China plans.
> And at least a few of them are starting to have qualms...
This is true. But that number is just a tiny, albeit loud, minority.
Does the tech community care about privacy? Google tracks users on an industrial scale. Yet most people in the tech community shrug their shoulders and say 'so what?'. Or they rush to Google's defence. (Does a giant multi-billion dollar company need your defence?)
Google has a peculiar slant on privacy - they seems to think it's all about security and nothing else. You can't have privacy without security, but security by itself does not equal privacy. It's the equivalent of saying we'll track you to death (and save it to our servers), but you can rest assured that your personal information will never leak. The tech community happily accepts that as perfectly fine.
MBAs vs humans. I hope the humans win.
I'm finding this hard to believe. China has over a billion people. Google would be insane to ignore it.
You are taking a personal risk but you are absolutely doing the right thing.
Though this particular issue seems harmless enough.
- Noam Chomsky
And again, he was fired because he basically said that half of his coworkers do not deserve to be there. So those coworkers then used their free speech to say they no longer wish to work with him, and they would leave the company. Google decided that the contributions of those other people were worth more than the contributions of Damore, exercised their freedom of speech, and chose no longer to associate with him. At no point whatsoever was Damore silenced or censored. He simply had to live with the consequences of his actions.
The argument is that it's better for society when those who disagree engage in dialogue instead of retaliation. So in that sense, yes, free speech is about being able to say what's on your mind without consequences.
We're not just talking about rights here, we're talking about principles. You do indeed have the right to walk away, or deny someone access to your platform, if you disagree with them.
But it's not the principled thing to do. It leads to radicalization, the collapse of consensus, and the death of the middle ground. These are the defining features of American politics today, increasingly volatile and partisan, because for so long so many people have faced consequences just for saying what's on their mind.
Free speech is fundamentally about recognizing that you disagree with someone, but at the end of the day, they're still human, they're still a fellow citizen with hopes and dreams just like you, and we can all be stronger if we find common ground and work together.
Here is Article 19 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, which is an aspirational statement, not a legally binding treaty. Nevertheless it is considered one of the most important documents of the 20th century.
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
No. From now on, it is the Damores of the world that have to reach out. They have to prove that they are the ones trying, instead of using junk science to claim that half their coworkers don't belong there.
You want to talk about principles? Then start by reaching out to those you put so much burden on.
Ah, I'm delighted to see that I'm getting somewhere. Yes, I am indeed arguing for free speech that's also free from consequences; one of the core values of classical liberalism that sprang from the Enlightenment. Freedom of speech doesn't mean much if actually exercising it invites repression and it does not matter in the slightest whether that repression comes from a government or from an outraged public.
An analogy with Jeanette Rankin comes to mind, though not precisely a speech issue; she was the sole member of the US Congress to vote against entry into WWII after the Pearl Harbor attack because of her staunch pacifist convications. After the vote she was forced to take shelter inside a phone booth until police could escort her home. According to modern liberals, she should have faced the "consequences" (your word, not mine), no matter how horrific, since they weren't coming from the government.
Note that I don't even agree with her action but, as the old quote goes "I (may) disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
Which boils down to you arguing that no one else should have free speech.
"According to modern liberals, she should have faced the "consequences" (your word, not mine), no matter how horrific, since they weren't coming from the government."
When you imply that I am advocating violence like that, then you have proven that you are not discussing in good faith. You are not trying to have a discussion, you are just trying to be "right".
If you are saying that I am advocating violence as a "consequence", then you are not discussing in good faith.
Individuals and businesses already have restrictions on their freedom of association already, the Federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Fair Housing Act of 1968 that require businesses and landlords / property sellers to serve people in protected classes being prime examples.
So, yes, you could say that I am just as much in favor of restricting the freedom of association for businesses and landlords to preserve equality for protected classes as I am interested in restricting the freedom of association for common telecoms carriers and social media businesses to preserve freedom of speech.
> Which boils down to you arguing that no one else should have free speech.
> So you're admitting you're not in favor of freedom of speech.
All you've done in this conversation is attempt to put words in my mouth while at the same time saying I'm the one not speaking in good faith. I see no benefit to continuing this discussion.
I've presented my reasoning, analogies, and historical precedents to the best of my humble abilities. Let the readers decide.
I don't often see someone actually owning up to this view - good for you.
I'm not sure how it's possible to enforce speech that is free from consequences. Do you have a specific definition of "consequence" that you'd like to elaborate on? Anything could be a consequence (like, just hearing the speech in the first place). What is it specifically that you're trying to protect against?
Not sure if you meant it this way but "owning up" sounds like it's something to be ashamed of. I'm quite proud of being a classical liberal and supporting free speech even if it does unfortunately mean that some not very nice people also get to their say their piece.
> Do you have a specific definition of "consequence" that you'd like to elaborate on? Anything could be a consequence (like, just hearing the speech in the first place).
The parent poster is the one that introduced the word "consequences" into the discussion (as I was careful to note in my response) so I refer your question to him/her. Judging by the approval with which s/he speaks of Danmore's firing, it seems rather improbable that it's benign to the recipient though.
As for Google, companies in general value employees who are flexible in the projects they're willing to work on. Without efforts to counteract bias, employees who decline projects due to ethical objections risk being seen as difficult.
However, Google employees are unlikely to be "seen as difficult" at Google for signing a petition involving a project they're not even working on. Nobody keeps track of this stuff. To get noticed, you have to show more leadership than that.
Google probably runs sentiment analysis on all its internal lists and tags everything to each persons HR file. They analyze Gmail already after all (tho’ having switched off or at least hidden its link to the ad system)
These are the managers who bragged about maintaining blacklists, remember. They certainly do police thoughtcrime.
In some places I've worked, there would be 1,000+ job openings the next day.
I've been fired twice for doing the right thing. Once the state got involved and fined the employer, which was nice, but didn't pay the bills.
"Doing the right thing" is so very easy when it's a movie or a book or someone else. In real life, it can take months or years to rebound financially and socially, so I wish all of these people well.
On the other hand, the person who leaked this to the NY Times will get fired if they can find them.
I disagree with every single point he raised. But his termination was a political execution, similar to what recently happened to James Gunn.
We live in the Trump era, firing people is political theater.
If Google decides to become more invested in Chinese culture, I predict we will see more ceremonial terminations. Because it becomes very difficult to resist doing that when political pressure comes into play.
Situations like what happened with Marriott go right to the heart of how corporations engage with China. It's relevant.
https://gizmodo.com/after-china-got-mad-marriott-fired-a-soc...
1) Google has decided that it does not want this content on their platform.
2) The totalitarian government has decided that nobody can access this content on any platform.
Encouraging the harassment of families of school shooting victims is pretty heinous, and not something I'd want affiliated with my brand. I also wouldn't want my brand to become a platform for someone who perpetuates conspiracy theories that cause true believes to pick up weapons and become terrorists, simply because that's how he makes a buck.
After all, both Google and Twitter have spent close to a decade silencing religious extremists on their platforms. Where were the free speech advocates when fundamentalist Muslims were silenced on Twitter and couldn't use the platform to spread their message?
It's not a first amendment issue because the first amendment only forbids the government from censoring speech, and private companies are not the government.
However, it's still a free speech issue, and it's still a censorship issue. Just not a first amendment issue.
Private companies can still censor and can stifle/forbid free speech.
No, people disagree on the meaning, scope, nature, and purpose of “free speech”, despite agreeing that “free speech” is a good thing.
It's true that the First Amendment (especially when combined with incorporation under the 14th) directly embodies a reasonably close approximation of one of the viewpoints of what free speech is all about, while simultaneously looking like a narrow special case of one of the other viewpoints.
But the nature of the disagreement here is not confusion between a principle and a legal embodiment of that principle, but a fundamental clash of beliefs about the nature of the named principle.
False, we do not live in ancient Rome, so censorship can be done by people who are not government officials.
>Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient" as determined by a government or private institution
Instead of completely censorsing/hiding things from you, suspected spam is placed in a folder that you can view and decide for yourself whether or not it's worth your attention.
That's actually exactly what the First Amendment of the United States Constitution explicitly prevents.
What it doens't prevent, though, is what you're actually upset about. Private corporations and individuals can censor all day long in the United States. It's a great misunderstanding that they're somehow not entitled to that.
Meanwhile, in China, the government dictates all censorship. Google is required to follow this exactly.
Very big difference.
> ...
> The internal debate over Maven, viewed by both supporters and opponents as opening the door to much bigger defense contracts, generated a petition signed by about 4,000 employees who demanded “a clear policy stating that neither Google nor its contractors will ever build warfare technology.”
Are signatures still being collected on the China letter? That count is quite a bit less than letter protesting Project Maven.
In my mind, trying to enter the Chinese market is far more concerning than Project Maven. The Chinese government has shown ample willingness to use its economic leverage to force foreign companies to adopt its stances (for instance http://time.com/5348666/airlines-websites-taiwan-china/), and subjecting Google, our main portal to the internet to that pressure is just too risky.
If you get 85,000 people together you can get 850 of them to agree to just about anything.
It's remarkable to me that the "feelings of 1.3 billion people" are so fragile that they're unable to enjoy their coffee cake if the company that made it doesn't kowtow to Beijing.
* (primarily because cn gov requested extensive access to their infrastructure, claims of attempted or partially successful break-in attempts, etc. When they ceased all censorship in China the decision was already made to leave, it was just for show.)
2. China steals source code and gives to Baidu
3. China kicks Google out of China
One the one hand, it's clearly a good sign that employees are comfortable doing this, as it could guide an enormous company to do better things for the world, and the lack of a contractual Sword of Damocles over their continued employment encourages the free flow of information and conversation.
On the other...were the first two times that your employer was found to be engaged in behavior you found to be morally bankrupt not enough? At some point, it's the rule, not the exception.
In terms of the practical realities of organizing developers, check out Tech Solidarity or your local DSA branch. Both groups are deeply involved with helping workers organize and restore a sane power balance to the American economy.
I’d like to echo the sibling comment to visit your local DSA branch if you want more information.
Look at the school walkouts in the United States lately.
Helicopter video on the news of 1,000 Googlers marching out of their offices would do a lot more to raise the nation's awareness of the issue, and put a lot more pressure on the C-level, than an internally-circulated letter.
Unions are great, when they are great.
The West Virginia teacher strikes were wildcat strikes, meaning they did not have the support of their union. The union was against the strikes but the teachers had the support of their community, which is far more important.
In short, and due to the recent Janus Act, unions in the US are not going to be very helpful for a while. But, more important is building a popular consciousness ready to articulate these struggles within a capitalist system.
DSA has a few very positive tech-focused organizing efforts underway in SF and NYC. I recommend starting at http://dsausa.org
Morally, of course its wrong, but what's the alternative over the long term?
They would cede the market to a more accomodating competitor (e.g. Baidu), who would then have a strategic advantage.
Google's potential market share is (world - China - whichever other country wants to censor them)
Google is big. It's not invincible.
Perhaps that is so, but you need to explain how, given Google’s massive lead everywhere else.
I just think that with China drawing towards being almost 20% of the population of the entire planet, the government there wields a lot more power globally than they are credited with.
A 20% smaller market is a serious disadvantage in the future, and I imagine Google have known this for some time.
I think we were all hoping their withdrawal would contribute to an eventual change of the censorship policy, but that hasn't happened, and by all accounts looks less likely now.
Fight censorship, really fight it, and enter all those markets with uncensorable peer-to-peer tech all the way, even replacing money.
Where does this idea come from that no matter how big and secure you are, it's not enough? Do people just like drama?
(Not a lawyer, not legal advice, etc.)
They're not doing it right now and seem to be affording it just fine: at their most recent earnings call, revenue was up 23% YoY to hit $110 billion annually, EPS was up 32%, and share price was up about 25%. There's no excuse for this other than the capitalist dictum that more income must be pursued at any cost.
Baidu is not a global competitor to Google, at all. Their English-language results are a joke; not even close to being as good as Bing's, never mind Google's.
My point is that by forgoing any amount of market Google is effectively allowing a competitor to ultimately have whatever their own growth potential is, plus 20%.
Its not about whether they need the money, which clearly they don't, it's whether by leaving it on the table (for reasons I agree with) they risk allowing themselves to be supplanted by someone else who isn't even pretending to "not be evil".
The other equally cynical argument I would make is, they're a public company, they have to make the numbers keep going up. I don't like being the d-word saying this.
To not do it. Google has plenty of fucking money; they don't need all the money.
"They would cede the market to a more accommodating competitor (e.g. Baidu), who would then have a strategic advantage."
In China. There are plenty of other people in the world, and most of those people do not want a search engine where the results are chosen by a totalitarian government.
This idea that Google "has to" do this, and that there can be only one winner of anything, ever, is terrible, and I believe is directly responsible for most of the ills of our day.
If Google (and Bing, just as an example of a less popular rival) were principled enough to say "you know what? No. We're not censoring." (as has been Google's policy until now) would Western governments meet them halfway and take a stand against rivals that were doing it elsewhere?
I believe that's what it would take to level the playing field (and I admit I could be naive here), but the suggestion itself is preposterous. No western government is ever going to place what would amount to an embargo on a search engine over them censoring results in another country.
I hear what people are saying about user's will vote with their feet (or hands as it were), and that Google is safe with their already dominant position, but I don't think history supports that view.
I also don't think the average user cares that much if someone else is getting censored thousands of miles away. Maybe I'm cynical, but people at large just don't care about this stuff, and I say this as someone who cares deeply about it.
(How many people outside of tech remember Edward Snowden? I'm sure they'll recall the name but I'd be surprised if you'd hear more than "was that the Russian spy guy?")
I really hope Google won't submit to censoring in China, I just think it's likely they will.
And it sucks.
And it sucks more that I believe it'll happen.
I don't want to be relying on the broken windows fallacy here however. We don't know the extent to which the Chinese government wants Google to comply. Since there are already a bunch of comments speculating the negatives, we can do the same with the positives.
Let's look at the potential benefits of existing in China. Results will be censored, there's no getting around that, but unfavorable, yet uncensored, results can be prioritized. Support for Chinese related tools might improve due to the increase in data. Translation could see a quality improvement for one of the most spoken languages in the world. Google may see an increase in revenue, potentially creating more jobs. Ads in China may provide an easier entry way for Americans to advertise there. I'm sure the list goes on.
I can’t find a record of even just the Chinese side claiming they have “evicted” Google. Perhaps the “Google doesn’t want to censor; kick Google out” version of events makes more sense with each year just because it’s simpler. It also distorts reality, though, so I think reminding everyone (including myself) the more mainstream timeline is worth a moment.
Originally Google China was offering the censored version of search to users within China, which was a controversy. At some point a massive hack targeted Gmail accounts belonging to dissidents and activists of all kinds (from cryptography to Falun Gong religion). Google supposedly could’ve chosen to keep the breach to itself, but did made it public the next year and cited as a reason to reconsider its Chinese operations[0][1].
It’s true that Google’s competitors in search have continued to operate within Chinese market. They have been facing the same issues[2], and by the looks of the history of it many of similar events may well not be publicly known.
As of now the only Google service available within mainland China that I know of is Google Translate. I believe it’s made available via servers in China, as the latency seems on par with other local apps.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_China#Operation_Aurora_...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2007/nov/14/news.yaho...
Why aren't they protesting about their technology potentially being abused during election cycles in US? That is something that hits closer to home for me.
There is some element of YouTube (and maybe Google Search results) returning things and suggesting things that are intended to lead people towards whomever is paying for those things to float to the top.
It's exactly like how people would clamor to censor all sorts of alt-right websites with glee, but defend all Trump-bashing websites to death. It's not that I approve of any alt-right ideology at all, but if they are serious about real "free speech", they need to drop this sort of double standards asap. Otherwise it's just another laughable exercise in hypocrisy and only labeling what helps their own interests as "just", exactly what the US government has been doing overseas in all these decades. Nobody would buy into such nonsense.
You can turn safe search off in the US.
Also, nothing is preventing one from founding a startup which elects its leaders democratically.
Not true, you can have a labor union for one company.
>one can deal/negotiate directly with companies individually.
Also not true, I have zero ability to deal/negotiate with my company and I'd say this is a period where workers actually have less rights and less ability to negotiate other than simply quitting which isn't really sustainable for many people since 80% of the country is living paycheck to paycheck [1]. As we approach full employment workers should be gaining more ability to negotiate, but it's not happening.
>Also, nothing is preventing one from founding a startup which elects its leaders democratically.
Lack of funding, lack of credit. This is always the 'easy answer' for capitalists 'just start your own company', but it's really not that easy.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/24/most-americans-live-paycheck...
Yes, you can, but for all practical purposes I believe this would never happen, as it’s unsustainable. I mean, can you imagine every little startup or small company having their own union? I think the whole point of a union is to represent workers across the industry, unless you’re tied to a huge corporation, in which case it would make sense to have its own.
> Lack of funding, ...
So if starting a company ‘is not that easy’, why do people complain about companies being ran like dictatorships?
It seems that, despite the hardship, these “dictators” have managed to successfully bring something into existence and ought to exert more control over a company’s fate, don’t you think?
And for the sake of clarity, I’m not denying the huge contribution of early employees, just to be clear. I think they’re instrumental to any successful venture.
Google, because of historical quirks with its culture, has provided employees a platform to do this, if only in a limited form. And what we see there is workers using it to organize and impose change from the bottom-up.
They’ll probably soon realize the limits of acting without a parallel power structure, such as a union, when executive power crashes down on them to curb this growing rebellion. But like I said, I’m hopeful that all the very smart people at Google will come to understand their true class position as labor relative to management and build something more durable that can help put the company back on a better, more ethical track.
Their absence from China didn't liberate the Chinese people and their reentry won't either, they need to ignore the hypocrites and do what's best for the company and for the long term they should tweak company culture and make it clear that rank and file employees won't have a say in big picture corporate decisions and planning, they already cost the company dearly and it must not become a habit.
I prefer google stick to its mission and serve the 6 billion of us that require free information to do our jobs.
That's a shit argument. In a different context it's "someone's gotta run the gas chambers, so I might as well collect that paycheck."
"Just following revenue" is the new "just following orders."
Google's reentry into China will definitely give the Chinese government leverage over them. It's opening the door for stuff like this to happen:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2007/nov/14/news.yaho...
> [Yahoo] claimed it had no choice other than to comply with a request from Beijing to share information about the online activities of the journalists. Yahoo handed their email records to the Chinese government.
> The journalists, Wang Xiaoning and Shi Tao, are serving 10-year jail sentences. Wang was accused of "incitement to subvert state power" after he emailed electronic journals advocating democratic reform and establishment of a multiparty system to replace the present authoritarian state. Shi was charged with passing on information that was designated a state secret
There's no such plan. The Communist Party will kick them out faster than you can say "great firewall" if they took any action to undermine their censorship regime.
Google Employees Resign in Protest Against Pentagon Contract
You realize that US Military Tech goes into killing innocent people literally all the time, right?
Such tech developed, isnt intended to kill innocents, just like the inevitable future deaths of self driving cars are not.
Repressive dictatorship that regularly jails political dissidents = bad
You also state that "not everything has to be binary" and then say something can be "worst", which is the same absolute you seem to be arguing against
What about Libya? What is the state of Libya? Let's not even get started on Afghanistan. Do you even know of Task force 47 in war of 1971 between India-Pakistan?
I'm not well versed in geo politics of Latin America but there have been cases over there as well where US would meddle in internal affairs of a country and overthrow a ruler.
> So "invading" is not the correct word...
I think you are contradicting yourself?
We invaded on false pretense 'Weapons of Mass Destruction' if I recall - it was an invasion and ideally it should have been an effort driven by the UN instead of the Republican party of the USA.
https://www.amazon.com/Thunder-Run-Baghdad-Not-Specified/dp/...
Its shot from the POV of bhagdadis
Imagine how much worse things would be if technical progress stopped 70 years ago and the military only had battleship cannon fire and napalm firebombing at its disposal.