Posted on 10/24/2018 7:27:26 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Khashoggi’s murder is only a symptom of a much bigger problem. The biggest mistake the Trump administration made in the Jamal Khashoggi case occurred while Khashoggi was still alive: letting Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, think he could get away with something so heinous — and so heinously stupid.
But the bell was rung, as it were, and there is no way to unring it.
The Saudis surely made everything worse by lying about it. But the aftermath is such a complicated mess because it illuminates decisions made long before Prince Mohammed’s goons brought a bone saw to Istanbul.
It’s a bit analogous to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. That murder sparked World War I, yet the war was about far more than the murder of a single official.
Look at the situation from the Saudi perspective. The U.S. has turned a blind eye to far larger horrors, including the Saudi-led war in Yemen. Prince Mohammed’s forces reportedly target civilian centers and tolerate rape, torture, and the conscription of children. The Iranian side is just as guilty.
Saudi Arabia also executes about 150 people a year, mostly by beheading and occasionally by stoning. In recent years, several women were executed for practicing “witchcraft” or “sorcery.” Yet the U.S. doesn’t say boo about that.
Instead, the Saudis have gotten two mutually reinforcing messages from the White House. First, President Trump has repeatedly said that every country has a sovereign right to protect its own distinct culture.
Well, in Saudi Arabia’s distinct culture, rulers can do whatever they can get away with, particularly with regard to their own citizens. From Prince Mohammed’s perspective, Khashoggi — a longtime supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood and an operator in the Saudi court — was an obstacle to reform and a tool of his enemies. That he had a U.S. tourist visa and a column in the Washington Post didn’t change that. It made him a greater threat.
The second message is that Saudi Arabia is our ally. This isn’t new, but the Trump administration has taken it to new, personalized extremes. So long as Saudi Arabia helps contain Iran, softens on Israel, and keeps the oil flowing out (and the weapons in), they can have a free hand.
To paraphrase FDR, the man who forged the U.S.-Saudi alliance, the Saudis may be SOBs, but they’re our SOBs.
The Saudis are also getting a third message, one that is coming more from the world of NGOs, op-ed pages, and Wall Street than from the West Wing: Saudi Arabia needs to reform its economy and culture.
Indeed, Prince Mohammed jumped the line of succession to do precisely that. It’s thanks to him that women are finally allowed to drive in the kingdom.
One of the more cynical talking points among those calling for new leadership in Saudi Arabia is the idea that reformers in backward authoritarian nations don’t do terrible things.
The shahs were reformers, supporting Western-style modernization and women’s rights. They were also brutal dictators.
Mikhail Gorbachev was a reformer. But I would be stunned if he’d never had anyone murdered. Regimes founded on mistaken principles have few nice options when seeking to reform.
The point isn’t that the ends justify the means, but that when dealing with murderous regimes, the choice is often between the more tolerable of murderers.
Some of the most outraged American voices in the Khashoggi affair had no problem working with Iran’s brutal regime. The Obama echo chamber made realist arguments about the nature of reform under the mullahs, but these same people are now morally aghast at our realpolitik with the House of Saud.
The Turks are even worse. Along with Iran, Turkey is competing with Saudi Arabia for regional dominance, and Khashoggi’s death is merely a propaganda tool for them. The Turks are brilliantly feeding evidence in dribs and drabs to an indignant Western press.
I get the indignation, but has no one followed the mass arrests and periodic assassinations of journalists under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan? Do people really believe the Turkish tyrant and NATO ally — who calls journalists the “gardeners of terrorism” — is sincerely offended? Should we call for Erdogan to step down? Why not?
I have no good idea for what we should do next, because the problem isn’t really the killing of Khashoggi. As outrageous as it is, Khashoggi’s murder is a symptom of a far longer series of mistakes.
Turned a blind eye to 9-11 too.
The Neocons are still trying to make this our problem.
16 of 19 of the 9/11 jihadists were Saudis.
Riyadh, Mecca and Medina should have been nuked on 9/12/2001.
Any, yeah, it's disgusting that our weapons are being used in Yemen.
Trixie should be ashamed!
It’s doubtful the crown prince had anything to do with the murder. He inherited a secret service that is imbued with Muslim culture and Muslim culture is brutal. It will be difficult to reform his clandestine services because what they did is okay by the Ninth century Koran. The ninth century is long gone and what happened is not okay by twenty-first century western standards. The prince is trying to update his kingdom for without the twenty-first century businesses it will fail. He knows this. His attempt to create a city shared with Egypt and Jordan where business and business people can operate like they were in Europe is an attempt to move Saudi Arabia into the modern age. But, it’s like updating a sword to somehow fire bullets. It’s going to be a tough transition. It won’t do us any good to lay this at his feet as he is our best hope of bringing Saudi Arabia into the western fold.
yes the neocons Bush and others did turn a blind eye to it.
This is not for Trump.
They are trying to take him down and start a war, so they can take him out.
Yet this neverTrumper would rather have had Hillary as president.
The Neocons are still trying to make this our problem.
Never Trumper Goldberg never misses a chance to take a shot at POTUS. He’d never in a million years write this with a Bushie in the WH. I was shocked to learn he makes $200,000 a year to write this garbage.
Now, the pain would be harder. But it has to be done.
Any, yeah, it’s disgusting that our weapons are being used in Yemen.
______________
Not by us. There is an entire Europe and Asia and Middle East that can do that. Not Trump. Not us. Not our people.
This drum is about Deep State and Neocons wanting power.
“bone saw to Istanbul”
Sounds like a good name for an 80s new wave song.
I don’t see how the assassination could benefit Saudi Arabia’s crown prince. He’s trying to get international money for large projects in his country. A conference of big investors just concluded in his country. Important investors didn’t come because of the assassination.
Therefore, I don’t think the assassination was something he wanted.
“The second message is that Saudi Arabia is our ally. This isn’t new, but the Trump administration has taken it to new, personalized extremes.”
BS, I have never seen Trump bowing at the waist to Saudis or promenading while holding hands with them like some former Presidents.
“The biggest mistake the Trump administration made in the Jamal Khashoggi case occurred while Khashoggi was still alive: letting Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, think he could get away with something so heinous — and so heinously stupid.”
Jonah Goldberg being Jonah Goldberg, that is, a never-Trumper and a repulsive prick.
Goldberg is a neocon war drummer
Plus his books.
Boy is doing well trying to hurt this country and its people.
Before his mother handed him his career on a silver platter, Jonah Goldberg was a wet-behind-the-ears nobody who used “like” three to five times EACH sentence.
He was worse than the most devotd high-school Valley Girl at a San Fernando Valley shopping mall.
You would have thought he was joking.
He regularly went on the radio doing it, too.
Why is the murder of a Muslim Brotherhood enabler/apologist/supporter any kind of “problem” for US?
Saudi Arabia is a monarchy based on tribal allegiances with a culture based on an almost biblical sense of honor. Most of the developed world cast off those forms in a series of bloody revolutions beginning in the late 18th century and wrapping up with unprecedented bloodletting of WWI. That's what was meant by the slogan "To make the world safe for democracy". The challenge for SA is to find a way to adapt to the 21st Century with a minimum of split blood. The alternative is much bloodier for them and the rest of the world.
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