[Peace-discuss] Prez Pans Saudi Shocker, Stays Mum On Mass-Murder Prequel

[David Green]

*- www.counterpunch.org <http://www.counterpunch.org>
- https://www.counterpunch.org <https://www.counterpunch.org> -*

*Prez Pans Saudi Shocker, Stays Mum On Mass-Murder Prequel*

Posted By *Richard Eskow* On October 25, 2018

There should be a simple rule for Trump commentary: Every criticism of his
actions should be placed in historical context by citing any other
politicians, in Washington and elsewhere, who have done similar things.
Appoint a hostile administrator
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/02/01/neil-gorsuchs-mother-once-ran-the-epa-it-was-a-disaster/>
to
gut the EPA? Reagan did that, and her son now sits on the Supreme Court.
Racist rhetoric? See Nixon, Richard and George H. W. Bush’s Willie Horton
ad. Promote a bloated military budget? Most politicians in Washington went
along with Trump’s latest request, and threw in billions he didn’t even ask
for.

I try to keep my Trump-only critiques to a minimum, for four reasons:

+ Everybody knows he’s an asshole. No news value there.

+ Everybody’s knocking Trump. It’s a trend. It’s like the 1970s, when
everyone started recording disco tracks, or the 1990s, when everyone went
country. Don’t follow the herd, I say.

+ Most Trump criticism is a distraction from the systemic political and
oligarchical failures that gave us Trump in the first place.

+ The tendency to characterize Trump as not only horrible, but
*uniquely *horrible,
contributes to our national amnesia regarding the other monsters in the
American id — some of whom still walk among us.

On that last point: Despite his newfound popularity among Democrats, George
W. Bush’s body count vastly surpasses Trump’s — at least so far. Who knew
that handing a favorite personality a piece of candy
<http://time.com/5384902/george-bush-michelle-obama-candy-mccain-funeral/>was
all it took to rehabilitate a war criminal? Abu Ghraib, torture, spying on
American citizens, Dick Cheney: all forgotten in one Hallmark moment.

What used to be called “living memory” — the recollection of events most of
us have personally lived through — is barely on life support nowadays.

*Prez Pans Saudi Shocker*

I was compelled to break my own rule today, however, when I read Trump’s
latest comment about the Saudi cover-up of Jamal Khashoggi’s murder. The
President of the United States and Commander-in-Chief of the largest
military force in human history reportedly said the following:

“They had a very bad original concept. It was carried out poorly, and the
cover-up was one of the worst in the history of cover-ups. Very simple. Bad
deal, should have never been thought of.”

That’s showbiz lingo as practiced by amateurs. It’s the way Hollywood
wannabes sound when they’re talking too loudly during a movie at the
Arclight Cinema in Hollywood. Style notes aside, Trump’s review of the
Saudi murder show was an unequivocal two thumbs down. Once the other world
leaders have filed their reviews we can check ‘em out on Rotten Tomatoes.

In the meantime, Trump isn’t wrong. The Khashoggi cover-up *was *a bad
concept, and it *was *carried out poorly. If Trump is frustrated about
that, he almost certainly has good reason to be. He has
well-documented financial
ties
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/i-love-the-saudis-trump-business-ties-to-kingdom-run-deep/2018/10/12/bcc0eda4-ce78-11e8-ad0a-0e01efba3cc1_story.html>
to
Saudi Arabia — much better documented, in fact, than any ties to Russia —
and he’d undoubtedly love to sweep this whole ugly matter under the
faux-bearskin rug as soon as possible.

*Town Without Pity*

But — and keeping item #4, above, in mind — there are a lot of people here
in Washington who’d like to bury the Khashoggi matter just as much as Trump
would. This town is awash in Saudi cash. It props up “bipartisan” national
security think tanks, funds research, and some of the “experts” you may
have seen on cable TV.

That’s not new information. The New York Times
<https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/09/07/us/politics/foreign-government-contributions-to-nine-think-tanks.html>
documented
the foreign funding of think tanks in 2014, with Saudi government money
going to the Atlantic Council, the Brookings Institution, the Center for
Strategic and International Studies, and the Middle East Institute.
Comments from one expert, quoted by Vox’s Max Fisher
<https://www.vox.com/2016/3/21/11275354/saudi-arabia-gulf-washington>,
demonstrate exactly what that money buys:

“’I could write about Saudi sectarianism, but then I might lose some
money,'” the expert said, explaining the thoughts a Gulf-funded scholar
might have. “‘I could write about UAE human rights abuses, but, you know,
there are abuses everywhere, and there are a million other things I can
write about.'”

*The King and Us*

Worse, to criticize Saudi brutality is to risk the enmity of the United
States government, which has backed it under both parties. The Obama
Administration’s support for the Saudis’ humanitarian catastrophe
<https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/09/yemen-saudi-arabia-obama-riyadh/501365/>
in
Yemen was continued and intensified under Trump. The horror has grown even
worse.

A child dies every ten minutes in Yemen, which means one probably died
while you were reading these words. Nearly half of all children aged
between six months and 5 years old are chronically malnourished and
stunted, conditions that will affect them for the rest of their lives.

And that’s just the children. (More statistics here
<https://ourfuture.org/20180410/as-the-world-watches-syria-dont-forget-about-yemen>
.)

Only one thing could make the Saudi/think tank story even worse: That’s
right, it’s Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook announced
<https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/05/18/alarming-facebook-teams-think-tank-funded-saudi-arabia-and-military-contractors>
last
May that it’s “partnering” with one of those Saudi-funded think tanks, the
Atlantic Council, to censor political speech on its platform. (They don’t
put it quite that way, but that’s what they mean.)

*Conscience and Cocktails*

The insiders who are genuinely outraged by Khashoggi’s murder — and who
weren’t outraged before — don’t deserve much credit. What does it say about
the empathy of our elites when they are unmoved by the deaths of children,
and can only summon emotion when the brutality extends to someone they
might have met at a cocktail party?

It’s useful hypocrisy, I suppose, if it can be used to muster support for
ending US involvement in Yemen. But there’s not much chance of that.

Michael J. Glennon, professor of international law at Tufts University’s
Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, explained why bad foreign policy
remains largely unchanged from administration to administration. In his
book, “National Security and Double Government,”

Glennon characterizes the “several hundred officials” who shape that policy
as answerable to no one and indifferent to the consequences and costs of a
metastasizing military machine. Glennon writes that their “dynamic”
promotes “encourages the exaggeration of existing threats and the creation
of imaginary ones.”

Those officials like things the way they are, and they set the rules
politicians must follow — unless they’re brave.

No wonder a “bipartisan” Congress gave the Pentagon billions of dollars more
<https://www.forbes.com/sites/eriksherman/2018/06/20/house-and-senate-democrats-vote-68-percent-and-85-percent-for-massive-military-spending/#7efefc1e5101>
than
the Trump administration had asked for — with yes votes from a lot of
“Resistance” heroes. That may explain the course of action Trump says he
plans to take regarding Saudi Arabia.

“In terms of what we ultimately do,” Trump said
<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/23/us/politics/khashoggi-cover-up-trump.html?action=click>,
“I’m going to leave it very much — in conjunction with me — up to Congress.”

*A Full Investigation*

When my broadcast team and I released a secretly-recorded audio tape of
Trump speaking at a June, 2017 fundraiser, I wondered in The Intercept
<https://theintercept.com/2017/06/30/leaked-trump-tape-could-raise-diplomatic-political-problems/>
why
Trump had “waded heavily into an ongoing confrontation involving Saudi
Arabia and its allies on one side and Qatar on the other” and suggested
further investigations into Trump’s financial dealings with Saudi Arabia.

There was one problem with that idea: The national security establishment
wants to protect its relationships with Saudi Arabia, and it wants to
escalate tensions with Russia. Predictably, Trump’s Russia ties have
received widespread coverage and investigation, while his Saudi ties have
gone all but unremarked.

Now, Trump is reportedly sending CIA Director Gina Haspel to help with the
investigation — because, when it comes to uncovering the truth about a
state’s brutal actions, who has more credibility than someone who participated
in an illegal torture program and systematically destroyed evidence
<https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/torture/haspels-cia-torture-defenders-have-no-case>
?

Haspel would never have become CIA director if President Obama had not
chosen to ignore evidence of war crimes by proclaiming
<https://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/12/us/politics/12inquire.html>, “We need
to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.” (Until we develop
“minority report” technology — you can be sure they’re working on it right
now — that statement would make it impossible to investigate *any *crime.)

*Concept and Execution*

Nobody ever expected the Saudi’s cover story to be plausible. It wasn’t
meant to be believed, at least by anyone familiar with foreign policy. But
it needed to be a simulacrum of plausibility, something official-sounding
and obfuscating enough to provide cover for the DC establishment as the
money spigot was re-opened. Unfortunately, their story is so preposterous —
a “bad original concept” that was indeed “carried out poorly”— that it’s
likely to take some time before the cash can start flowing again.

Given the gravity of the horror and the enormity of the crime, it could
take as long as six weeks.

No wonder the Saudi story got such a bad review. Trump, and the entire city
of Washington, was hoping for a halfway decent performance on opening
night. But, when the curtain rose, the Saudis did the same thing on the
world stage that they’ve been doing in Yemen for years:

They bombed.
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