Our Saudi Problem Didn’t Begin with Jamal Khashoggi’s Murder

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.

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.

“Most of the other defenders of Saudi Arabia don’t.”

I don’t consider myself a defender of Saudi Arabia. Muslim culture is a brutal, anti-woman, anti-western and anti-freedom war plan, whether it’s Sunni or Shia or any of the few sects between. However, Saudi Arabia is one of the pieces on the board. Western diplomacy should be about using those pieces in the way that best reforms Islam to our mutual advantage. The present leadership of SA and el-Sisi in Egypt are the best events to happen in our favor in my lifetime. (Atatürk came and went and has been erased.) We shouldn’t throw away any chance we get to improve Islam so that the 1.5 billion members can live freer and join us on the march towards peace.

I hate to agree with Obama, but these traitors were valued targets:

8 U.S. Code § 1481 - Loss of nationality by native-born or naturalized citizen; voluntary action; burden of proof; presumptions

(a) A person who is a national of the United States whether by birth or naturalization, shall lose his nationality by voluntarily performing any of the following acts with the intention of relinquishing United States nationality—
(1) obtaining naturalization in a foreign state upon his own application or upon an application filed by a duly authorized agent, after having attained the age of eighteen years; or
(2) taking an oath or making an affirmation or other formal declaration of allegiance to a foreign state or a political subdivision thereof, after having attained the age of eighteen years; or
(3) entering, or serving in, the armed forces of a foreign state if (A) such armed forces are engaged in hostilities against the United States, or (B) such persons serve as a commissioned or non-commissioned officer; or
(4)
(A) accepting, serving in, or performing the duties of any office, post, or employment under the government of a foreign state or a political subdivision thereof, after attaining the age of eighteen years if he has or acquires the nationality of such foreign state; or (B) accepting, serving in, or performing the duties of any office, post, or employment under the government of a foreign state or a political subdivision thereof, after attaining the age of eighteen years for which office, post, or employment an oath, affirmation, or declaration of allegiance is required; or
(5) making a formal renunciation of nationality before a diplomatic or consular officer of the United States in a foreign state, in such form as may be prescribed by the Secretary of State; or
(6) making in the United States a formal written renunciation of nationality in such form as may be prescribed by, and before such officer as may be designated by, the Attorney General, whenever the United States shall be in a state of war and the Attorney General shall approve such renunciation as not contrary to the interests of national defense; or
(7) committing any act of treason against, or attempting by force to overthrow, or bearing arms against, the United States, violating or conspiring to violate any of the provisions of section 2383 of title 18, or willfully performing any act in violation of section 2385 of title 18, or violating section 2384 of title 18 by engaging in a conspiracy to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, if and when he is convicted thereof by a court martial or by a court of competent jurisdiction.
(b) Whenever the loss of United States nationality is put in issue in any action or proceeding commenced on or after September 26, 1961 under, or by virtue of, the provisions of this chapter or any other Act, the burden shall be upon the person or party claiming that such loss occurred, to establish such claim by a preponderance of the evidence. Any person who commits or performs, or who has committed or performed, any act of expatriation under the provisions of this chapter or any other Act shall be presumed to have done so voluntarily, but such presumption may be rebutted upon a showing, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the act or acts committed or performed were not done voluntarily.

They are also not afforded any protection under the Geneva Conventions:

an unlawful combatant is a fighter who does not play by the accepted rules of war, and therefore does not qualify for the Convention’s protections.

The Saudis are not financing and supporting terrorist groups killing Americans in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan

The Saudis are not actively harassing US shipping in the Persian Gulf

The Saudis are not developing nuclear weapon capacity.

Iran is.

So it is past time “Conservative Inc” stop being the mindless propaganda drones of the Iranians and focus on who are the real enemies of the USA.

Your idiocy on this topic is well established. You don’t need to keep posting on to provide more evidence of your complete lack of a hint of a notion of a whiff a clue of a rational thought.

Trust me, as a retired Army officer who spent a long time engaged in and teaching counterterrorism operations, I had no use for any of the three and I agree that they were traitors who needed to be at or below room temperature.

However, we are either a nation of laws or we aren’t. The President of the United States does not have the authority to order the assassination of anyone, especially a US citizen. Every American citizen, no matter how deplorable (and no, I’m not talking about we Trump supporters) is entitled to due process.

With respect to 8 U.S. Code § 1481 and INA § 349, the clause “with the intention of relinquishing United States nationality” is absolutely critical. Losing one’s citizenship does not only entail the performance of the actions mentioned in §s 1481 and 349, but performing them with the intent of relinquishing one’s citizenship.

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