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Saudi vital part of US economy by buying arms: Pundit

Friday, 23 March 2018 1:19 PM [ Last Update: Friday, 23 March 2018 1:22 PM ]

An academic says Saudi Arabia is positioning itself as a “vital part” of US economy by purchasing more weapons, adding that Washington does not care if these arms are used against Yemeni civilians.

“The Saudis come every decade or so, they come in and they buy a billion dollars American weapons. They do it whether they need weapons or not. So essentially what is going on here is that the Saudis are positioning themselves to be a vital part of the US economy because the arms industry is the fastest growing aspect of US economy and we would go into depression without this part of our economy,” Lawrence Davidson, a professor at West Chester University, told Press TV in an interview on Friday.

“And so the Saudis have positioned themselves as a contributor, as one of the pillars of that part of our economy with which increasingly we cannot do without and obviously under the circumstances it does not matter who is on the other end of these weapons and who is getting killed by them; so essentially that is the strategy and the Yemenis do not play a part in this, at least not in the economic strategy of American companies,” he added.

The United States has formally approved weapons sales to Saudi Arabia totaling more than $1 billion, despite growing pressure from rights groups to halt arms deals with Riyadh which is waging a brutal war in Yemen.