3 ms·

This is absurd. Who is selling SA the weapons it will use in Yemen.

reitanqild 8y ago
> This is absurd. Who is selling SA the weapons it will use in Yemen. Everyone who gets a chance? (-a few European countries who stopped recently.)
dash2 8y ago
The fact that other governments are involved does not make SA's actions less bad.
moosey 8y ago
This is whataboutism. Both are horrid: Corporations in the United States that build and sell weapons with the permission of the US government, other western governments and corporations that do the same as well. Yeah, horrid. It doesn't excuse the fact that SA and MBS are also horrible.
- resters 8y ago
  Not at all. To qualify I would need to be defending MBS. On balance the US causes substantially more human suffering in the world than all other terror groups and despots combined. It’s strange that character attacks on MBS work so well to make Americans assume that the US must be the good guy. In the US there is a tremendous appeal to the narrative that the US is the (relative) good guy. American exceptionalism is a religion and it easily leverages the widespread white suoremecist views of Americans who already mistrust the brown folks. So beware of reinforcing the American exceptionalism dogma when you cite “whataboutism”. It is often budled into that critique.
  - fit2rule 8y ago
    > American exceptionalism is a religion America is run by a Death Cult, which worships the ability to wage unfettered war and destruction above all else. We will never be free of it for as long as we allow them to keep their secrets - which is why journalists are murdered when they get too close to the fire.
    - dang 8y ago
      This sort of flamewar comment will get you banned from Hacker News regardless of how many bad things the CIA did. You've been posting like this repeatedly; please stop. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
cmurf 8y ago
The CIA does not manufacture or sell weapons, and it doesn't set weapons sales policies. War profiteering American military industrial complex companies manufacture, sell, and lobby to make this possible. The allowance for the arms sales is made possible by the legislative and executive branches, so you can blame primarily POTUS and the Senate for not just the arms sales, the very definition of blood money, but also funding the military logistics the American military has been providing to Saudi Arabia for the deaths of Yemeni civilians. But the people pulling the trigger are the Saudis.

> This is absurd. Who is selling SA the weapons it will use in Yemen. Everyone who gets a chance? (-a few European countries who stopped recently.)

dash2 8y ago

The fact that other governments are involved does not make SA's actions less bad.

moosey 8y ago

This is whataboutism. Both are horrid: Corporations in the United States that build and sell weapons with the permission of the US government, other western governments and corporations that do the same as well. Yeah, horrid. It doesn't excuse the fact that SA and MBS are also horrible.

resters 8y ago
Not at all. To qualify I would need to be defending MBS. On balance the US causes substantially more human suffering in the world than all other terror groups and despots combined. It’s strange that character attacks on MBS work so well to make Americans assume that the US must be the good guy. In the US there is a tremendous appeal to the narrative that the US is the (relative) good guy. American exceptionalism is a religion and it easily leverages the widespread white suoremecist views of Americans who already mistrust the brown folks. So beware of reinforcing the American exceptionalism dogma when you cite “whataboutism”. It is often budled into that critique.
- fit2rule 8y ago
  > American exceptionalism is a religion America is run by a Death Cult, which worships the ability to wage unfettered war and destruction above all else. We will never be free of it for as long as we allow them to keep their secrets - which is why journalists are murdered when they get too close to the fire.
  - dang 8y ago
    This sort of flamewar comment will get you banned from Hacker News regardless of how many bad things the CIA did. You've been posting like this repeatedly; please stop. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

cmurf 8y ago

The CIA does not manufacture or sell weapons, and it doesn't set weapons sales policies. War profiteering American military industrial complex companies manufacture, sell, and lobby to make this possible. The allowance for the arms sales is made possible by the legislative and executive branches, so you can blame primarily POTUS and the Senate for not just the arms sales, the very definition of blood money, but also funding the military logistics the American military has been providing to Saudi Arabia for the deaths of Yemeni civilians. But the people pulling the trigger are the Saudis.