******Official politics thread ******

[Wonkie]

Originally Posted by Bazia [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

List of major weapon manufacturers
Main articles: List of modern armament manufacturers and List of defense contractors
Further information: Companies by arms sales
This is a list of the world's largest arms manufacturers and other military service companies who profit the most from the War economy, their origin is shown as well. The information is based on a list published by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute for 2018.[21] The list provided by the SIPRI excludes companies based in China. The numbers are in billions of US dollars.

Rank Company name Defense Revenue
(US$ billions) % of Total Revenue
from Defense
1 United States Lockheed Martin 44.9 88%
2 United States Boeing 26.9 29%
3 United States Raytheon 23.8 94%
4 United Kingdom BAE Systems 22.9 98%
5 United States Northrop Grumman 22.3 87%
6 United States General Dynamics 19.4 63%
7 European Union Airbus 11.2 15%
8 France Thales Group 9.0 51%
9 Italy Leonardo 8.8 68%
10 Russia Almaz-Antey 8.5 94%

america is also the largest arms exporter in the world

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_industry

so, what, we should just shut down the missile factories and stop droning weddings?

not gonna happen libtard

[Bazia]

Originally Posted by Wonkie [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

so, what, we should just shut down the missile factories and stop droning weddings?

not gonna happen libtard

yes it will, we are on a populist trajectory

[Zeboim]

Originally Posted by Rader [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

You can't have it both ways, libtards. Are we supposed to kick a$$ with our army, or pull back? If it is only based on which party occupies the White House, then go F off, I really don't give a sh-t what the US does. If it is a principled argument, glad to hear it, so Bush was great and Trump sucks, or Trump is great and Bush sucked? Will be surprised if any one bites and admits to supporting either Bush or Trump.

Addendum: Ignore is a wonderful feature, all those TDS sufferers can go F themselves and I don't have to read their cr-p halleluiah

You actually can have it both ways. This whole shitstorm only happened because Trump gave Turkey the go ahead. A skeleton force on the border with a stern "Don't do it" was all we needed to protect the Kurds. You don't have to have our army actively kicking ass to get a return from them - what we need is the force projection to cause the other guy to consider it not worth it. Which really does not require much from us.

Trump sucks. His Syria policy has been a complete disaster. Personally I think TD is nothing but an enormous conman playing the country for fools, but that's a seperate issue.
Obama sucked. He did a poor job in the Middle East imo, and his initial withdrawal was... well, pretty similar to what Trump just did. Bad call, broke the whole thing. Same thing Trump is doing imo.
Bush was a bull in a china shop and broke the whole thing in the first place. Saddam was not a good person - but Saddam had control, and in the Middle East the Strongman is everything, it's just the way that place works. See: Assad. We broke it, we bought it. I would be delighted if we had never gone into Iraq (and on bullshit reasons no less) but we did, and this broken ME is what we have now. We can either exert enough influence to try and stabilize it like we have been... or hand it to our rivals(RU) on a silver plate while creating a terrorism incubator.

Why is Russia so invested in Syria? It's the oil stupid. Syria is ideal as a transport hub for oil and natural gas to Europe, including that produced in Iraq by gazprom. Naturally Russian troops moved into US positions as soon as we dropped everything and ran. This is a major step in Russia cementing energy dominance over Europe, which is a pretty big problem for the US.

[Wonkie]

Originally Posted by Bazia [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

yes it will, we are on a populist trajectory

ah, to be young and naive the world so full of wonder

[Bazia]

Originally Posted by Zeboim [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

You actually can have it both ways. This whole shitstorm only happened because Trump gave Turkey the go ahead. A skeleton force on the border with a stern "Don't do it" was all we needed to protect the Kurds. You don't have to have our army actively kicking ass to get a return from them - what we need is the force projection to cause the other guy to consider it not worth it. Which really does not require much from us.

Trump sucks. His Syria policy has been a complete disaster. Personally I think TD is nothing but an enormous conman playing the country for fools, but that's a seperate issue.
Obama sucked. He did a poor job in the Middle East imo, and his initial withdrawal was... well, pretty similar to what Trump just did. Bad call, broke the whole thing. Same thing Trump is doing imo.
Bush was a bull in a china shop and broke the whole thing in the first place. Saddam was not a good person - but Saddam had control, and in the Middle East the Strongman is everything, it's just the way that place works. See: Assad. We broke it, we bought it. I would be delighted if we had never gone into Iraq (and on bullshit reasons no less) but we did, and this broken ME is what we have now. We can either exert enough influence to try and stabilize it like we have been... or hand it to our rivals(RU) on a silver plate while creating a terrorism incubator.

Why is Russia so invested in Syria? It's the oil stupid. Syria is ideal as a transport hub for oil and natural gas to Europe, including that produced in Iraq by gazprom. Naturally Russian troops moved into US positions as soon as we dropped everything and ran. This is a major step in Russia cementing energy dominance over Europe, which is a pretty big problem for the US.

we produce almost double the oil russia does annually, so tell me again why americans should care

[Bazia]

Originally Posted by Wonkie [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

ah, to be young and naive the world so full of wonder

says the guy agitating for poor white kids from arkansas to protect sunni muslim kurdish terrorists

[Zeboim]

Originally Posted by Bazia [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

we produce almost double the oil russia does annually, so tell me again why americans should care

Okay, so there's this thing called the Atlantic Ocean, and it kind of makes shipping natural gas and even oil (although honestly, oil is easymode, but it is still a lot cheaper to not transport it that far) to Europe pretty fucking hard, but mostly the natural gas. This big, big wet thing means that our geopolitical rival (Russia) doesn't have to bother with all of this expensive, annoying business, and can just pipe it all right to Europe or ship it far shorter distances in expensive LNG ships as natural gas requires liquefaction before it can be shipped overseas (this is our big problem in the states fyi, the process is expensive).

Perhaps you have now come to the realization that our rival having control of most of our allies energy sectors is not a good thing, and that could do rather serious things to the current global balance of power that we do not want. Hopefully.

says the guy agitating for poor white kids from arkansas to protect sunni muslim kurdish terrorists

A) That kid signed up to join the military to protect America's interests
B) This is America's interest
C) The Kurdish population is in the tens of millions, generalizing them as terrorists is stupid
D) Conflating the Kurds in general with the PKK is an extremely incorrect brainlet view.
E) We have been operating in conjunction with the Kurds since before even Gulf War 1. We've stabbed them in the backs multiple times, but they are an absolutely different breed from Sunni terrorists.

[Horza]

Trump officials say aid to Puerto Rico was knowingly stalled after Hurricane Maria.

Two officials with the Department of Housing and Urban Development acknowledged during a hearing this week that the agency knowingly stalled sending hurricane relief funding to Puerto Rico after missing a legally required deadline to do so. The officials said that the agency missed a deadline issued by Congress to start a process to help Puerto Rico receive billions in federal housing funds that Congress had allocated after Hurricane Maria hit the island in 2017.

[Kaveh]

Originally Posted by Bazia [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

says the guy agitating for poor white kids from arkansas to protect sunni muslim kurdish terrorists

The Kurds are Sunni terrorists? Seems like they had women fighting and were aligned with Christian militias, whereas the Arabs sent to ethnically cleanse them shoot captives that are bound and unarmed.

Have fun not being in Valhalla

[Bazia]

Originally Posted by Kaveh [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The Kurds are Sunni terrorists? Seems like they had women fighting and were aligned with Christian militias

gonna have to see a source for that, kurdish ottomans genocided christians