Comment by walrus01 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by walrus01 | Hacker News Reader

In 30 years from now, the US, Canada and UK selling billions of dollars of military equipment, support and training to the saudi regime will be seen as morally equivalent to when the US dropped thousands of tonnes of munitions on Cambodia. Or the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam, My Lai massacre, etc.

Worthy of war crimes prosecution in The Hague.

How hard is it, really, to take a principled stand and say that the most technologically advanced products of the NATO military-industrial complex should only be sold to similarly democratic countries? The Netherlands or Italy wants to buy some current generation air superiority fighters, gps guided bombs or surface to air missiles, sure. Saudi Arabia? Nope. Pakistan? No way. The Erdogan government in Turkey? Negatory.

In the particular case of the saudis' war against the Houthis, the US doesn't give a fuck, because you know who supports the Houthis? Iran. Anyone who's spent time researching the history and reasons for the last 50 years for the poor relationship between the US and Iran will immediately understand why. Basically, it's "fuck Iran, they've got what was coming to them".

It's a proxy war where they're using US munitions to attack things the US can't politically stomach attacking directly. If the Saudis started open warfare against Hezbollah (again, Iranian supported), I'm sure the US and UK would be just as keen to look the other way.

>How hard is it, really, to take a principled stand and say that the most technologically advanced products of the NATO military-industrial complex should only be sold to similarly democratic countries?

Its quite difficult, in view of the fact that the largest so-called democracy is committing the same heinous crimes as the nations you select for target of your ire. The USA and its criminal "Coalition of the Willing" has been getting away with the same kind of warfare - unfettered, un-tethered, indiscriminate murder of innocents - for decades.

So until the USA has its own feet held to the flames of justice that we all yearn for, there is no hope for justice for the 500,000 innocent victims of the Wests own, illegal wars.

Pakistan and Turkey are democratic countries. Just saying. But I get what you meant.

Anyway, I don't have a simple solution to this complex problem. Should US sell weapons to India? China?

Maybe we shouldn’t be selling them at all.

India has proved itself to be a politically and militarily responsible country unlike its western neighbour, which floundered embarrassingly at even basic human rights.

Not in the current climate, no, and most certainly not for Pakistan where military runs the state!

I understand what you're saying, and agree to a certain extent. But given enough time, all of this will just be statistics. And given even more time, it will be history. I've been reading a lot of history recently, and so much of it is pure analysis, all the emotions and morality removed. Perhaps the concept of humanity is closely tied to chronocentrism. Now think about what we did to survive 100k years ago..

Just a thought.

> But given enough time, all of this will just be statistics.

Certainly you are joking. You know you're paraphrasing Stalin right now?

Or maybe “how will history judge us?” is not a useful question to ask when making moral choices.

It assumes our many times descendants will judge our actions at all, and that if they do they will still have values that say wiping out a civilian population in war is evil.

We should stop helping SA to intentionally starve a people to death because we know it to be terrible now.

You're right. We seldom think of how the future will judge us. If we did, we'd take the whole climate change thing more seriously. I don't think the people who are responsible for making these decisions think morally. So it is baffling to the common person, wondering why we let these things happen.

I'm not joking, or supporting any moral positions. Just thinking of it from another perspective. I am aware of the Stalin quote. There are very few cases in history when we intervene at the right time. Sadly, this will be another one of them.

Given enough time, everyone dies and everything is meaningless. It's easy to be a nihilist until you watch your own child starve to death.

The Erdogan government in Turkey? Negatory

That would be super awkward, as Turkey is the only place European countries can get F35 engines overhauled. It boggles the mind how that was allowed to happen. In general there should have been two locations for redundancy but in the specific case of Turkey, it's now looking to Russia for its defence needs anyway.

Really? Source?

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/10/19/f35_fighter_engines...

It's pretty common knowledge that the work was spread around for political reasons. Similarly everyone's avionics must be overhauled in the UK.

Haha, that's insane. Congrats, Norway. You could have public road take-off and landing Gripen fighter bombers serviced at home for a fraction of the price.

https://www.defenceaviation.com/2010/12/gripens-ability-to-t...

In the UK it was Margaret Thatcher that got the formerly Great Britain into selling arms for oil to the Saudis in a big and very corrupt way. From time to time Parliament has to exercise some serious levels of censorship to make sure that no details of this get discussed in the open.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Yamamah_arms_deal

(Note the detail on 'sheep's eyeballs')

There are currently six thousand employees of British Aerospace (BAE Systems) out there working for the Saudis tinkering with their aeroplanes and keeping their air force at maximal readiness.

What does this entail?

There are no hard facts, any knowledge is strictly 'oral tradition'. However, I have it on reasonable authority (pub chat with people that work for the 'defence sector') that the Saudis have vast underground hangars chock full of the most modern BAE fighter jets. Because the Saudis have 'free oil' they also have these planes running in the hangars, absolutely totally ready to taxi out the door and onto the tarmac at a moments notice, 24/7, 365.25 days of the year.

The UK's RAF only has thirty thousand or so people in it, probably the bulk of them shuffle paperwork and are not front line. The UK Marines only number seven thousand. So this gives an idea of how large a commitment it is to have six thousand or so people from BAE Systems tinkering with planes in these Saudi bunkers.

Civilians in the UK have absolutely no idea about any of this. When they go to buy petrol they are thinking of what snacks to buy and why the other people in the forecourt are such chavs. They are not thinking about how they are indirectly complicit in the arms for oil (and backhanders) 'Al-Yamamah' deal. Or about how this has worked out for Iraq, Yemen or any of the other Saudi neighbours.

Anyway, it gets interesting soon for Saudi Arabia because they now have the Chinese customers wanting their own special favour. Thanks to The Donald the Chinese government want to buy oil in their own currency, the Yuan, bypassing the step of buying dollars first to then pay the Saudis for oil in USD.

Oil isn't the scarce reserve people think it is, supply has to be controlled so that profit can be made. If the Saudis don't want to take Chinese Yuan then they won't be supplying the largest importer of crude oil which is now China, not those fracking Americans. Iran will take the Yuan and I am sure Venezuela (who have the most proven reserves) will do to, given time and if the U.S. don't do a Libya on them. The Saudis certainly are living in interesting times.

Trouble is if we don't sell them weapons then they buy them off Russia and China and we have even less influence.

Yes, the good old "If I don't do it, someone else will".

I could go and rob the local supermarket with that excuse.

Yeah but the way to stop robbing at the supermarket is police or similar, not you restraining yourself and hoping the bad guys will follow your example.

1) We're not doing much with all this supposed influence we're getting from the sales of weapons.

2) If they can easily switch to Russian or Chinese weapons, that implies we're not getting that much influence by selling them weapons.

3) If the US is not willing to exercise its influence (point 1) or is not really getting that much actual influence (point 2), it seems like we're just profiteering off a proxy war.

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