Posted on 10/16/2018 8:25:23 AM PDT by Kaslin
Over the weekend Donald Trump warned of "severe punishment" if an investigation concludes that a Saudi hit team murdered Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
Riyadh then counter-threatened, reminding us that, as the world's largest oil exporter, Saudi Arabia "plays an impactful and active role in the global economy."
Message: Sanction us, and we may just sanction you.
Some of us yet recall how President Nixon's rescue of Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur War triggered a Saudi oil embargo that led to months of long gas lines in the United States, and contributed to Nixon's fall.
Yesterday, a week after Jared Kushner had been assured by his friend Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that Khashoggi walked out of the consulate, Trump put through a call to King Salman himself.
According to a Trump tweet, the king denied "any knowledge of whatever may have happened 'to our Saudi Arabian citizen.'"
Trump said he was "immediately" sending Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Riyadh to meet with the king on the crisis. The confrontation is escalating. Crown Prince Mohammed and King Salman have both now put their nation's honor and credibility on the line.
Both are saying that what the Turks claim they can prove -- Khashoggi was tortured and murdered in the consulate, cut up, and his body parts flown to Saudi Arabia -- is a lie.
For Trump and the U.S., this appears a classic case of the claims of international morality clashing with the claims of national interest.
The archetype occurred in the mid-1870s when Ottoman Turks perpetrated a slaughter of Bulgarian Christians under their rule.
Former Prime Minister William Gladstone set Britain ablaze with a pamphlet titled, "The Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East," calling for the expulsion of the Turks from Europe.
Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli and Queen Victoria were apoplectic. For they were relying on the Turks to block the encroachment of Czarist Russia into the Eastern Balkans and down to the Turkish Straits.
Disraeli prevailed. The Brits put morality on the shelf.
For the U.S., morality and interests collided when FDR recognized the Bolshevik regime of Joseph Stalin in 1933, even as Stalin's agents were starving to death millions of Ukrainian peasants and landowners.
Foreign policy moralists also took a holiday to cheer Nixon for flying to Peking and toasting Mao Zedong, even as Chairman Mao's Red Guards were carrying out the national pogrom known as the Cultural Revolution.
Questions arise: If Khashoggi was assassinated and the order came from the royal family, does that make the Saudis morally unacceptable to us as allies or partners in the Middle East? And if it does, how do we justify our Cold War ties to autocrats such as Chile's Gen. Pinochet, South Korea's Gen. Park Chung-hee, the Philippines' Ferdinand Marcos, or the Shah of Iran?
How did Franklin Roosevelt handle such associations? "He may be an SOB," FDR said of one Caribbean dictator, "but he's our SOB."
During World War II, when the Germans uncovered in the Katyn Forest a vast gravesite containing the remains of thousands from Poland's officer corps, dating to Stalin's occupation, Poles in Britain came to Prime Minister Churchill to ask for an investigation.
Churchill, for whom Stalin was by now an indispensable ally, replied dismissively: "There is no use prowling round the three-year-old graves of Smolensk."
Nor is it only during wartime that the U.S. has associated with authoritarians with repellent human rights records.
The U.S. maintains a treaty alliance with the Philippines of President Rodrigo Duterte, who has approved the extrajudicial killing of drug dealers, thousands of whom have been murdered.
Gen. el-Sissi came to power in Cairo in a military coup that ousted an elected government headed by a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, who is, along with thousands of Brotherhood members, now in prison.
Since the coup attempt in NATO ally Turkey in 2017, President Recep Erdogan has imprisoned thousands, including more journalists than any country on earth.
Last week came reports that China has arrested the head of Interpol, and has indeed been operating an archipelago of re-education camps in its west to purge the ethnic and religious beliefs of the Uighur people.
As for Saudi Arabia, members of Congress are said to be readying sanctions to impose on the Saudi regime if it is proven Khashoggi was killed on royal orders.
However, which would be a greater violation of human rights: the sanctioned killing of a political enemy of the regime or 10,000 dead Yemenis, including women and children, and millions facing malnutrition and starvation in a Saudi war of aggression being fought with the complicity and cooperation of the United States?
Rather than resist Congress' proposed sanctions, President Trump might take this opportunity to begin a long withdrawal from decades of entanglement in Mideast wars that have availed us nothing and cost us greatly.
This is their "interrogation" problem....we had ours...
We have our own oil reserves now. It is thus a secondary concern who sells the Mideast oil to the world. When the locals settle it amongst themselves, they will sell. They can’t eat and drink it.
A couple of time-delayed ground penetrating nukes into their oilfields.
Only thing any place in the middle east except Israel is good for is a glow in the dark parking lot.
Both a ‘journalist’ and a supporter of islamoterror?
A win/win
The Saudis live in a rough neighborhood, and there are 3500 princes who think they should be king. There are continuous plots to overthrow whichever prince or king is at the helm.
They do not play tiddly-winks, and indeed would not survive if they were not quick and proactive about controlling their opposition. They do not hesitate to bump off troublesome rivals.
But it is not normal for them to do it in such a public fashion; they usually do it such that it can be denied, even if everyone knows they did it, they can all pretend not to know. To do it in such a public and undeniable way is not their MO. There is more to the story. We need to know what that “more” is.
No, let’s just roll in and take their oil, tired of playing nice
The alliance is intact
Salvation is not required
How about we choose neither of them?
Saudi Arabia is a creation of British/Russian rivalry, within the context of “The Great Game.”
If we are willing to remove the dollar as the reserve currency and do away with the petrol dollar. BTW, the Saudis will go nuclear quickly.
They can have it. Just like we should have let them keep Afghanistan. We have plenty of oil now. We should start acting like it. If China and Russia want to keep the ME safe and put it their boys to die for such interest, good on them.
How much oil remains is debatable. Depends also on how much water cut their wells are producing. No matter how much residual oil might remain in a reservoir, at some point it becomes uneconomical to extract.
China and Russia are not on par with U.S. for oil technology.
All the oil in the Middle East is not worth one drop of American blood. It’s time for politicians to realize that the number one commitment of the government is to the American people, not to foreign political interests.
What if you find in the end, that British Intelligence was behind the Trade Center???
Yes...statically.
California largest importer Saudi light crude?
Yes. Save it, PROVIDED they loosen restrictions on Christian literature and assembly. Even a little bit.
Iran is now the world's biggest state sponsor of terrorism. They have killed hundreds of Americans and supported Hamas and Hezbollah.
The removal of the Saudi Royal Family could allow radical Islamic fundamentalists to take over. No doubt Iran would be involved using the sizeable Shi'a population of the Eastern Province of the Kingdom as surrogates.
Obama negotiated an agreement with Iran. Trump is working towards an agreement with NK. It is called Realpolitik.
Saudi Alliance?
More like our troops have been their rent-a-army ever since the first Gulf War.
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