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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

The US gets only 8.1% of its oil from Saudi Arabia now, and that's dropping each year. The US is at last in a position to tell Saudi Arabia where to get off.

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US and Britain sell the Saudis over 100 billion dollars in arms. You can't get Saudis off your back with just no longer needing their oil. They still got money. And the military industrial complex needs to eat.

Saudi is a big buyer of US weapons. Considering how hard Trump tries to please and borrow influence from military, I doubt he is going to do anything about it.

Race and religion matters, if you are not in the league, you better make sure you have power or money, or something to offer. At least to me, that is what Trump believes.

Race and religion are for the masses. It's a tool to divide and conquer them. The elite only speak the language of power and money. The Saudis make their people follow archaic Islamic laws with sexual repression while their princes are sexually abusing Americans in America and their royals have harems filled with Americans prostitutes. It's ridiculous.

Why would the US military care about selling weapons? They are made by private companies.

The US military can sometimes get their weapons cheaper, if there are a lot of foreign buyers to share the cost in various ways.

If Lockheed is successful and able to fund itself well, fund new weapons programs, the military is happier for obvious reasons. Not to mention the crossover between the public and private spheres when it comes to careers.

There is also a follow on effect. If other countries have F-15s, the US needs to have something better. Today we are friends, but that could change (e.g. Iran and the F-14)

It's about jobs, jobs. Programs building weapons that other countries buy keep jobs. And the Saudi's buy a ton of weapons.

Isn't it true, that the second US tells Saudi Arabia where they can stick their oil, they will become best friends with Russia? And isn't this the reason why US tries to keep good relations with them,despite the whole country being a cancer of humanity?

A whole country a cancer to humanity?

I suspect this sort of generalization is what caused the student visa problem in the first place.

It's a political thing. Oil is a fungible resource. Saudi Arabia helps control the market. US doesn't want to lose that power by pissing them off.

As oil goes, so goes the world.

US fracking pissed Saudi Arabia off big time. The gov't didn't seem to mind.

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