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The United States warned Turkey against moving ahead with plans to buy a sophisticated Russian missile defence system that the Pentagon believes would threaten its advanced F-35 fighter aircraft.
The State Department made the remarks on a day when the head of US European Command spoke to politicians on Capitol Hill and said Turkey should reconsider its plan to buy the S-400 from Russia this year.
"We've clearly warned Turkey that its potential acquisition of the S-400 will result in a reassessment of Turkey's participation in the F-35 programme, and risk other potential future arms transfers to Turkey," said deputy spokesman Robert Palladino on Tuesday.
The US agreed to sell 100 of its latest fifth-generation F-35 fighters to Turkey and has so far delivered two of the aircraft. But Congress last year ordered a delay in future deliveries.
[...] The S-400 can track a large number of potential targets, including stealth targets such as the US F-35 fighter jet. Other advantages included its high mobility, meaning it can be set up, fired and moved within minutes.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 06 2019, @06:48PM (11 children)
Gee I wonder why they are regressing.
Morons will say "cause Islam herpaderpadoo" and completely ignore that Western nations destabilized their countries, spurred on by an ancient feud between Christianity and Islam. The US has plenty of regressive religious nutjobs who would like nothing better than to implement a theocracy like some of the middle east. The US and others intentionally supported the nutjobs in a vain attempt to control the Middle East. Sadly it completely backfired, the idiots running the show just couldn't comprehend that actually supporting freedom and democracy would be better for humanity. Oh the irony.
This does not absolve the Islamic nutters, but don't pretend it is some problem inherent with Islam. The Christian Bible has plenty of its own nasty shit, yet people like The Mighty Buzzard are able to use their brains to parse out the good bits and (hopefully) not go literal witch hunting. Y'know, something the US did not too long ago. As you pointed out it is possible for the Middle East to join the modern world, but bombing the shit out of innocent civilians will do quite a bit to hinder their advancement. Hard to improve when you're stuck in a loop of fury, and sure is easy for religious nutters to instigate religious violence when people's children are murdered by foreign meddlers.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday March 06 2019, @07:01PM (8 children)
Modded up, because few people seem to understand how we have stabbed ourselves in the back, repeatedly, in dealings with the mid-east. We give lip service to democracy, but we'll readily topple a democratic government for failing to fall into line. We don't really give a small damn about democracy, it PROFIT that we really care about.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday March 06 2019, @07:13PM (6 children)
<sarcasm>
If a majority of people in a country vote for something the US doesn't like, then can that country really be called a democracy?
</sarcasm>
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 06 2019, @07:23PM (2 children)
No need to be a dick in response to Runaway's valid post. He didn't even throw in some allegedly ironic racism :D
Democracy in the US is indeed in trouble, but we're far from a true lack of democracy. The current subversion of the system is done through gerrymandering, voter suppression, and good old election fraud.
We need ranked choice voting to replace the electoral college and voting days should be official holidays. I'm sure there are other things to be worked out, but those are the easy ones.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday March 06 2019, @09:20PM
I agree with ranked choice voting.
I am not trying to be a dick. I did include sarcasm tags which I usually do not do. And I do not intend any disrespect towards Runaway.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by GlennC on Thursday March 07 2019, @12:39AM
FTFY
Sorry folks...the world is bigger and more varied than you want it to be. Deal with it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday March 06 2019, @08:13PM
That has been America's foreign policy for more than a century.
See Guatemala, Iran, Cuba, Chile, Congo, Nicaragua, etc, etc, etc. No sarcasm needed.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday March 06 2019, @08:59PM
Well, a decent FTFY might be
This sig for rent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 07 2019, @04:05PM
Really? Go ahead and look at post 9-11 news. Bush was obsessed with his "approval rating" which is ironic considering how unpopular he'd eventually become. He was obsessed with this because the snakes in his cabinet were using his popularity as a proxy statistic to gauge support for the wars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 06 2019, @07:42PM
Oh please! Don't make such a big thing about it. It's common piracy, just like those Johnny Depp movies, only without a plot, or good looking actors. I know everybody likes to think we've evolved, but we haven't. We just add a new facade and refine the makeup.
So yes, destabilization does effectively "salt the earth", it serves a purpose, it keeps the competition out. You don't want them getting fat on our leftovers. Thank Brzezinski [arizona.edu] and Carter for this. It worked, and is working today. Look at the trillions of dollars being kept out of circulation.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Wednesday March 06 2019, @08:54PM (1 child)
The wars in most of the Middle East, at least since 1900 or so, have relatively little to do with religion, and everything to do with who controls the oil. The US, UK, and most of the rest of the west will ally themselves with despicable monsters of all stripes so long as they allow western oil companies to make boatloads of money off of that natural resource. Why do you think the US continues to prop up the Saudi monarchy after a bunch of Saudis destroyed the World Trade Center and a bunch of Saudi money went to ISIS? Cheap oil and gas. Would it surprise you to learn that one of the major goals of the Obama administration in Syria was to establish pipeline routes from the now-conquered Iraq through Syria and Turkey into Europe?
The only wars in the Middle East where it's reasonable to say religion was a key cause are those involving Israel. However, the religious causes of those fights, at least since 1967, have had more to do with Jewish beliefs about which land God had promised to Israelites and Christian beliefs about the return of Israel being a sign of the Second Coming than with any Muslim beliefs about jihad. The Muslims in the area are generally more mad about the Israelis taking a bunch of their land and their stuff and killing a whole bunch of them than they are about the Israelis being Jewish.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 07 2019, @02:53AM
When the Jews came over they developed the land and settled in previously uninhabited areas / inhabitable swamp land: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Palestine_(region)#British_Mandate_era [wikipedia.org]
Both the British and the Ottoman tax survey in the region records aren't disputable: There were a few fishing villages. Some goat herders. A few tourist attractions. But no industry or agriculture. And no exports except the "holy relics" industry and funeral services serving old people coming over to get buried in the holy land. The most commerce the area saw was the ports where ships going from Egypt to Turkey made a pit stop... Literally a grave yard.
Regardless, Muslims and Arabs genocide each other over Sunni vs. Shia or whatever in every region of the Muslim -/+ Arab world so any person that claims a strong opinion with regards to Israel that doesn't have similar opinions towards at least a dozen other nations in the region (and can names them and similarly recite some bullet points) is just a self-deluded antisemitic fool. In the end it's just a tiny regional power that has no economic relations to its neighbors and the Palestinian refugees aren't numerous enough to make any difference on the local geopolitics.