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| Secretary of State Mike Pompeo meets with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (AFP) |
Take a Deep Breath on Saudi Arabia - Sohrab Ahmari
When it comes to Saudi Arabia and the Jamal Khashoggi affair, everyone needs to take a deep breath.
That's an almost impossible task given the heinousness of the crime and the Saudi regime's feckless efforts to dodge responsibility for it. An alliance that withstood the melting heat of the 9/11 attacks, carried out by a team of mostly Saudi terrorists, now appears on the verge of collapse over the fate of an op-ed columnist.
Before endorsing calls to scrap the Saudi-American relationship, keep in mind the following: First, the Saudis can be terrible friends. But they are friends in a region full of enemies. What Riyadh did to Khashoggi was awful and appalling. The Saudis do lots of other awful and appalling things, too. Beheadings. Judicial amputation. Outright bans on the practice of religions other than Islam.
Even so, Saudi Arabia isn't a sworn, systemic enemy of the U.S. Their state is not founded on the mantra of "Death to America, Death to Israel, Death to Britain" (that would be the Islamic Republic of Iran, Riyadh's archenemy).
Second, destabilizing Saudi Arabia would be an enormous folly. Tightening the diplomatic screws on the Saudi regime could have deeply unsettling effects. As the outcome of the Arab Spring taught Western elites, don't flirt with a destabilizing rupture with Riyadh unless you are prepared to countenance an Islamist takeover and/or further Iranian encroachments.
(Commentary)
It doesn't really matter what views Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi held. Opinions quite simply never justify murder. Yet there is a widespread misperception that Khashoggi was some kind of liberal dissident.
As the New York Times noted, Khashoggi joined the Muslim Brotherhood as a young man, and he "remained conversant in its conservative, Islamist and often anti-Western rhetoric."
Khashoggi told Al Jazeera Arabic a year ago he "deplored the [Saudi] authorities' decision to allow some in the Saudi news media to express support for Israel against the Palestinians." For Khashoggi, the "struggle against Israel" was a critical part of the Islamist agenda he embraced.
Khashoggi's intense hatred for Israel is clearly reflected in his Al Hayat columns. Israel's "existence is outside the context of history and logic...it came into being by force, it will live by force and it will die by force," he wrote. He praised Hamas for accomplishing the "miracle" of procuring rockets and explosives, and was full of admiration that "the huge network of tunnels that extends for miles under Gaza and the borders with Israel and Egypt were used brilliantly to inflict unprecedented losses on the enemy."
(Ha'aretz)
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1 comment:
This is a difficult situation because we are dealing with many unpalatable parties here. This is why the Obama administration tried to engage with Iran and bring them back into the global community and engage with the next generation of Iranians. The reality is there are few differences with those we choose as allies, like the Saudis and those we don't, and one of those few differences is how they relate to Israel. That's fine as Israel is our ally and is unfairly treated by much of the international community, but it is clear all of these "alliances" are of immediate needs, and it is not clear how long they will continue...especially as the world moves away from the dwindling oil supply. And yes, the journalist wasn't anyone's great progressive thinker, but killing journalists at a time when many have a hard time distinguishing journalism from opinion is not in the interest of a future free society.
But as we rush to "not make it worse" and to salvage our alliances, we must remember that accepting these odious values and brutal regimes and assisting them is what created much of our problems in the MidEast. We supported the Shah of Iran and his brutal regime. Then, after the Islamist revolution in Iran, we supported Saddam Hussein in Iraq against the Iranians, until we decided that we didn't support Hussein anymore, invaded and deposed him, which empowered Iran.
So, treading lightly might be nice, but it is hard to start after decades of playing favorites and making many mistakes. And it's not clear that treading lightly in this case is the best course.
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