It’s not out of civility, and I think there are good reasons to dislike Armin Papperger; for example him being a filthy stinking rich CEO and him allowing deals with non-European countries. But, we need our militaries and we need our weapons industry. The military aid we sent to Ukraine did not materialize out of thin air. The pacifist position of “war bad, weapons bad, people making weapons bad” is infantile. If we stopped making weapons, Russia, or someone else, would waltz right in. Our military (and by extension the weapons industry) is what enables any of our diplomacy to not be completely ignored by nuclear bullies like Russia. A Russian plot to kill Armin Papperger is an attack against us, Germany, the west, NATO, not him individually.
I tend to mostly agree with what you’re saying, but there’s no common theme to our comments. I referred to nothing but the first sentence of your previous comment.
That being said, I’m totally in favor of state armories, like Springfield used to be, but that’s not what we have right now. And never really had in Germany for the past 100+ years. And whether you privatize the manufacture of weapons or not, everyone involved in it needs to make a decent living. R&D needs to be done and financed, either from profit or tax-payer money. In my book the personal enrichment by a select few on the top is bad, no matter the industry. Allowing arms to be exported where they shouldn’t be, is a political “failure”; it’s an indirect subsidy that other states pay for to keep your own supply cheap and running. That’s not an arms manufacturer’s CEO’s fault. He is just a regular CEO asshole, and still would be, if “working” in another industry.