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Retired U.S. generals, admirals take top jobs with Saudi crown prince

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Retired U.S. generals, admirals take top jobs with Saudi crown prince

#141

Post by rawling »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #119
dirtyid wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The disclaimer sentence It's a manufacturing consent piece to setup this: >Anyone working in the UK for “hostile” states like Russia and China who fails to register their role will face up to five years in jail, Suella Braverman will announce on Tuesday. [0] https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/hostile-state-workers-... With respect to Saudi's, a lot of Saudi of military is serviced/supported by Pakistanis who feed…

> Anyone working in the UK for “hostile” states like Russia and China who fails to register their role will face up to five years in jail, Suella Braverman will announce on Tuesday. This is exactly like Russian 'Foreign Agent' law introduced about 10 years ago. Should we be following in the footsteps of despotic regimes? If we have just declared that these regimes are morrally bankrupt, we should be doing the opposit…

I'm sure there are a lot of things Russia does that we shouldn't do the opposite of.

Re: Retired U.S. generals, admirals take top jobs with Saudi crown prince

#142

Post by dirtyid »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #119
dirtyid wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The disclaimer sentence It's a manufacturing consent piece to setup this: >Anyone working in the UK for “hostile” states like Russia and China who fails to register their role will face up to five years in jail, Suella Braverman will announce on Tuesday. [0] https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/hostile-state-workers-... With respect to Saudi's, a lot of Saudi of military is serviced/supported by Pakistanis who feed…

> Anyone working in the UK for “hostile” states like Russia and China who fails to register their role will face up to five years in jail, Suella Braverman will announce on Tuesday. This is exactly like Russian 'Foreign Agent' law introduced about 10 years ago. Should we be following in the footsteps of despotic regimes? If we have just declared that these regimes are morrally bankrupt, we should be doing the opposit…

IMO this was introduced so UK security architecture is more in line with US/AU when it come to PRC as pre-req for getting piece of multibillion AUKUS nuclear sub deal.

Re: Retired U.S. generals, admirals take top jobs with Saudi crown prince

#143

Post by rdxm »

alexfromapex wrote: post #78
nosianu wrote: post #57

Also just today: BBC headline "Ex-UK pilots lured to help Chinese military, MoD says" https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-63293582 With more background info: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/is-china-really-using-... Some highlights from the BBC article: > Former British military pilots are being lured to China with large sums of money to pass on their expertise to the Chinese military, it is claimed. > Up to 30 former…

Saudi Arabia is not as worthy of an adversary as China but they still are a dangerous country to underestimate. They were possibly behind 9/11, after all: https://theintercept.com/2021/09/11/september-11-saudi-arabi... .

No post body was provided.

Re: Retired U.S. generals, admirals take top jobs with Saudi crown prince

#144

Post by nl »

edgefield wrote: post #14
basementcat wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sort of thing isn’t all that unusual. John Paul Jones, whom many regard as the "father" of the United States Navy, served as a rear admiral for the Imperial Russian Navy after he retired from the US Navy. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Paul_Jones

Perhaps not unusual, but ethical? That’s a different matter. A former US general working for a theocratic, monarchy with a deeply concerning history on human rights raises some serious red flags in my mind.

Saudi Arabia is officially an ally of the US.

Re: Retired U.S. generals, admirals take top jobs with Saudi crown prince

#145

Post by FredPret »

imgabe wrote: post #136

If they're an ally, it's to our benefit that their military is strong. If they become an enemy, it doesn't hurt that we built their military and know everything about it inside out. If the US could make every other country's military a subsidiary of the US military, they would.

> If they become an enemy, it doesn't hurt that we built their military and know everything about it inside out.

What if you know it inside out and all it benefits you is that you now know they have a competent and robust organization, whereas before they were bungling idiots and you only kind-of knew the extent of it?

Re: Retired U.S. generals, admirals take top jobs with Saudi crown prince

#146

Post by ClumsyPilot »

bombcar wrote: post #137
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Pentagon has awarded a 48-million-dollar contract to train the nucleus of a new Iraqi army to Vinnell Corporation, a US firm which also trains the Saudi National Guard. Were similar contracts in place for training Afghani Army? Maybe we should get a refund? I found shocking how western media just declared Afghani army as incapable and closed the chapter. Someone was in charge of this program for 20 years. Someo…

Nobody wants to talk about training the Afghans for 20 years and having them decide to be citizens or Taliban the moment we left. Training went well, but why would they bother once we're gone?

have youread nothing about the fact that government was paying salaries of soldiers that did not actually exist, and in fact their commanders were pocketing it.

This whole 'afghans decided not to fight' is really convenient. Like blaming a plane crash on pilot error - nothing to investigate, no defects to correct, the only one at fault is already dead.

Re: Retired U.S. generals, admirals take top jobs with Saudi crown prince

#147

Post by unethical_ban »

google234123 wrote: post #67
marshray wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My dim understanding is that once you are enrolled in General- and Admiral-level security clearances, you are not quite free free to freelance your experience globally without significant limitations. The key questions raised would seem to be: did they in fact obtain the required signoffs, and are the current requirements sufficient or do they need some adjustment?

The saudis are allies and we sell them many of our top weapon systems.

It seems the ethics and wisdom of that is the debate.

Re: Retired U.S. generals, admirals take top jobs with Saudi crown prince

#148

Post by credit_guy »

europeanguy wrote: post #61
credit_guy wrote: post #3

Well, they are free people, not slaves. If they want to take a job in the private sector, they should have the freedom to do it, including working for a sovereign state that is not an enemy. Of course, they have knowledge of classified stuff, but I'm sure there are protocols around that, and they are aware of it. It would be more scandalous if they were to take jobs with Russia, or Iran. But Saudi Arable is a US ally…

Saudi Arabia hasn't really been a us ally since about 2016 when Saudi Arabia tried dumping oil price to ruin the us shale industry. Ever since the USA has been preparing to strike back. Look up the NOPEC bill. It looks like the USA plan is to charge Saudi Arabia with manipulating oil prices (being a cartel is literally the stated goal of OPEC). SA knows this and they're aligning themselves with Russia and China (with…

> Saudi Arabia hasn't really been a us ally since

But then who has "really" been an ally since whenever? All sovereign nations have national interests, and they are not 100% allied with the US interests.

Still, in the case of Saudi Arabia, their most important security concern is Iran. And there, they are aligned with the US. Also, the US is the most important security partner of Israel, and, according to wikipedia [1], Saudi Arabia has quite a good working relationship with Israel

  reports have surfaced in recent years indicating extensive behind-the-scenes diplomatic, intelligence, and security cooperation between the two as part of a larger Arab-Israeli alliance against Iran (see Iran–Israel proxy conflict and Iran–Saudi Arabia proxy conflict) and, more recently, Turkey under Erdoğan. At the same time, the Saudi relationship with the Palestinian National Authority is deteriorating.
A former general working for Saudi Arabia is in no way traitorous. It absolutely makes sense, both in their personal interest, but also in the general US national interest.

Yes, I know about Kashogi. But those guys are not going there to tell MBS to kill more disidents. They are going there to give security advice. And that security advice will benefit the US, not hinder it, because it will result in a stronger ally, not a stronger enemy.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93Saudi_Arabia_re...

Re: Retired U.S. generals, admirals take top jobs with Saudi crown prince

#150

Post by Der_Einzige »

raydiatian wrote: post #99
edgefield wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps not unusual, but ethical? That’s a different matter. A former US general working for a theocratic, monarchy with a deeply concerning history on human rights raises some serious red flags in my mind.

The fuck is ethical about anything the US military has done since 1945?

Iraq 1 was justified imho
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