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Comment by pkinsky | Hacker News Reader

After the outrage generated by Brendan Eich's $1000 donation to prop 8, I would hope Dropbox associating with one of the people behind the Iraq war draws a similar response. If anyone's deserving of ostracization, it's war criminals who are effectively above the law.

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I agree with you - this is like 100x worse than making Eich CEO - but doubt anything will come of this. The Eich thing was somewhat of a surprise, but no surprises here. If them backing off this decision was possible they wouldn't have gone with her in the first place.

Does that mean anyone who is supporting Hillary for the 2016 election should be excommunicated, because you know, she supported the same war?

Sadly, the needless deaths of 500,000 Iraqis just isn't as emotionally compelling to people as gay marriage.

You mean that one war that Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Bill Clinton, and Al Gore supported?

The distinction (to me) would be - did they support it because they were told by people they trust (ie us.gov) that it was valid? I can halfway excuse them for this.

Or did they support it with first-hand knowledge that it wasn't valid (ie us.gov)? This I cannot excuse them for.

She was Secretary of State not Secretary of Defense. I would hope this whole Eich fiasco doesn't start a conservative witch hunt in SV. Not that the Eich thing was really a conservative/liberal issue, but people may try to turn it into that.

Heh, may as well get all the facts straight here. She was National Security Advisor in the lead up to, and first two years of Iraq. The Secretary of State at that time was Colin Powell. She became Secretary of State in 2005.

Furthermore, being Secretary of State would not absolve her from any responsibility that people believe she may have. Secretary of State is incredibly important to any major conflict, probably right after Secretary of Defense. You may recall that Colin Powell worked quite hard trying to sell the Iraqi War abroad.

That said, I don't want a witch hunt either.

You mean the same war that Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton also sold to the American public?

'Witch hunt' normally refers to hounding someone for minor or imagined offenses.

Condoleezza Rice actively participated in launching a war of aggression, an offense which was deemed worthy of the death penalty at the Nuremberg trials. I think ostracizing her and any company which does business with her is entirely fair and reasonable.

Depending on who you ask every war is a war of aggression. I find this whole concept of "war crimes" silly. Like there's legal and good way to go about killing people and a bad and illegal way to go about killing people.

Wow, what a wishy-washy response that escapes all responsibility. Just because something is sometimes hard to decide doesn’t mean you have to throw it out of the window to make it all more comfortable for you. You are a coward.

> You are a coward.

That sort of language is definitely not constructive, and probably explains your downvotes.

Glad I'm not the only one that saw this parallel. I can kind of see a case for them being different (community aspect of Mozilla, and quibbling over how responsible she is), but the offense at this ought to fall along similar "party lines", so I'm not sure why anyone would choose to play a double standard. It will be interesting to see if the same people get upset, if anyone really does.

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