What's the fuss over a killing in Istanbul?
1. It involves America...
Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi citizen and longtime critic of the Saudi Royal Family, was a permanent resident of the United States, where he moved after it was unsafe to remain in his home country. Khashoggi spent the past year as a columnist for the Washington Post, where he regularly published articles about Saudi Arabia and its leadership.The man lived in USA, was a legal resident and worked for an American company. He was born a foreigner and held a foreign passport but it was public knowledge he hoped to fulfill the conditions of US citizenship.
Eligibility for naturalization is based upon being a permanent resident for at least five years and Khashoggi was only on Year 2 when he was brutally murdered.
2. What happened?
Jamal Khashoggi disappeared two weeks ago in Istanbul during a visit to the Saudi consulate to attain documents for his upcoming marriage.According to details from audio recordings from Turkish officials, Khashoggi was dead within minutes of entering the Saudi Consulate — beheaded, dismembered, his fingers severed — and within two hours the killers were gone.
After he was shown into the office of the Saudi consul, the killers seized Mr. Khashoggi and began to beat and torture him. The consul was present and objected--according to the recording. ‘Do this outside. You will put me in trouble,’ he said. One of the agents replied: ‘Shut up. If you want to live when you come back to Arabia, shut up.’
She says, "When I asked him [Jamal] why he decided to live in the United States, he said America was the world’s most powerful country, where one could feel the political pulse of the planet. Jamal had applied for U.S. citizenship, and his reason to visit to Turkey was our intended marriage. He was hoping to take care of all necessary paperwork before returning to Washington."
"On Sept. 28, Jamal visited the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul for the first time, despite being somewhat concerned that he could be in danger. ...he noted that there was no warrant for his arrest in his native country. Although his opinions had angered certain people, he said, the tensions between himself and Saudi Arabia did not amount to hate, grudges or threats.
"...Jamal did not think the Saudis could force him to stay at the consulate in Turkey, even if they wanted to arrest him. In other words, he did not mind walking into the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul because he did not believe that something bad could happen on Turkish soil. It would be a violation of international law to harm, arrest or detain people at a diplomatic mission, he said, and noted that no such thing had ever happened in Turkey’s history."
"After a positive first meeting with consular staff, who welcomed him warmly and assured him that the necessary paperwork would come through, Jamal was hardly concerned ahead of his second visit. He walked into the consulate of Saudi Arabia, his native country, without doubting he would be safe there."
IT'S A TALE OF A SHAKESPEARIAN-SIZED TRAGEDY...of revenge, torture, killing, torn-apart lovers, and gruesome death. And the killers would appear to be real evil... with no respect for response of Turkey and America that would usually accompany such a violent execution. Did I mention the audio says the team sent to kill Khasaggi included a medical expert to help cut the body into pieces to get it out of the consulate? That is also on the tape.
And if the tape is fake, then where is Jamal Khasaggi, who never came out of the Saudi consulate despite his waiting fiancee?
3. So what's the real issue?
Saudi has lots and lots of money.
The Bush family (you'll remember a few 9/11 related discussions about why Saudi involvement was downplayed) and the Trump family have made millions of dollars of business with Saudis. But so have almost every huge USA company. Many have had a taste; some depend upon it and others want to depend on it. Really, really want to depend on it.
Ironically the Saudi Arabian fortune is based on oil and gas, so it is American money coming home again.
Saudi money is everywhere in USA. Really. It's invested in Wall Street, in Hollywood movies, in sports, in real estate, union pension funds, charities, and more.
Saudi knows this and an outstanding promised payment to USA ($100 million) was suddenly transfered the day before our Secretary of State landed in Saudi to discuss this very murder. How coincidental is that?
The US President also knows this. He has a military deal of $110 million on the table (seven THAAD missile defense batteries, over 100,000 air-to-ground munitions and billions of dollars of new aircraft.) And a MOI (Memos of Intent) list that comes in at a whopping long tail of $930 million (for what they call sustainment and we might call service, training and spare parts). That makes KSA (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) a billion-dollar weapons customer for USA.
And any lack of our action might encourage other countries to assassinate critics visiting their consulates in New York, London, Paris or Rome. It sets a bad precedent to let anyone get away with murder, especially such a public and gruesome murder.
If the US says nothing, does nothing...we will lose the morale high ground. And it will look weak and will clearly counter our traditional American values about human life. Really, it's hard to crow about stopping abortion if you don't stand up against beheadings and torture.
If we do say something or enact sanctions, we might lose a billion dollars, some defense/military jobs--and that might have political implications domestically.
And there are more than a few Senators (and even Christian ministers) that argue we need Saudi as an ally in our fight against Iran and radical Islam.
“You’ve got one journalist — who knows? Was it an interrogation? Was he assassinated? Were there rogue elements? Who did it?...You’ve got $100 billion worth of arms sales...we cannot alienate our biggest player in the Middle East.”
That's Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network, on his flagship television show urging viewers to remember that “we’ve got an arms deal that everybody wanted a piece of…it’ll be a lot of jobs, a lot of money come to our coffers. It’s not something you want to blow up willy-nilly.”
We cannot afford to offend the Saudis, say these pragmatists, because we need the Saudi help on more important things than the muder of a single man. And their money, of course. What's the life of one man against the greater good?
If that sounds like the same rationale as a suicide bomber, you'd be about right. We usually insist that in America we value the single life because it could be any one of us. It's the more democratic approach-- kings could sacrifice pawns but democracies are supposed to value all lives as if they were your own.
In Ethics 101 classes in American universities, they explore one life vs the greater good in the Trolley Problem. Yet if there was no big money involved, would we hesitate on this occassion to express our national shock and outrage? If so, then this issue is about so much more than just sacrificing one man.
This is a more classic dilemma: your money or your soul. Do we listen to the money or to our conscience? Do we have the character to stand up for what is right when it will costs us materially?
Further along, we might need to ask if our path to the Make America Great Again will be at the expense of letting the rest of the world rot? Our role as leader of the Free World once gave us morale high ground which gave us leadership-- many other countries learned follow our example. The problem with taking care of only yourself means you encourage all others to do the same-- think about in terms of your neighbor chopping down a tree on a common border because he doesn't want the shade, or playing music super loud because that's the way he or she wants it, or voting to approve a highway bypass because it just misses his property and only would take yours. If you have bad neighbors, you live in a hell you won't forget. The biggest problem with putting yourself first comes when everyone else copies you.
4. Why are is America waiting and not acting on this murder?
Because the Saudis are good customers, it politically makes sense not to jump immediately. If the President shows reluctance at first, then when he has to act he can credibly say his hand was forced by their own actions.
No one knows exactly what evidence we've seen because the White House cut off the intelligence report to the Senate. To avoid leaks-- which you can understand-- would be very sensitive to the Saudis right now.
Pompeo, US Secretary of State, has heard a recording but gosh-- it's in Arabic! So he can honestly say he "never listened to a recording." You can "hear" but not "listen" in a foreign language. He also has a transcript of the audio.
But in a world of fake news, how can you prove anything 100%? The President already compared this scenario to the Kavanaugh accuser: innocent until proven guilty. (Except Senator Lindsay Graham is on the other side this time.)
It's no longer enough to have an audio. Now someone has to prove it is not fake.
And meanwhile, the time gives the politicians two more advantages: 1) the more time, the less emotional peole react and they eventually get back to their own lives and let the politicians handle it any way they want and 2) you can bet both KSA and USA politicians are looking for ways they can avoid total disruption... if they can find a way to blame it on rogue agents or even catch & hang publicly a few scapegoats...then it keeps the murder from going up to Crown Prince Mohammed who has been a valued ally ever since President Trump took office.
5. Why does KSA need so much military hardware?
In one word, Iran.They also have a war in Yemen, but that, too, is about Iran. In 2015, Saudi Arabia formed a coalition of Arab states to defeat the Houthis in Yemen. The coalition includes Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Sudan and Senegal.
Saudi Arabia shares a long border with Yemen. Saudis see Iranian expansionism through its support for Shia armed groups. News commentators sometimes claim Iran now controls four Arab capitals: Baghdad (their own), Damascus (Syria), Beirut (Lebanon) and Sanaa (Yemen).
US, UK and France have sold weapons and intelligence to KSA because they have no love of Iran and Yemen has long been home to an al-Qaeda franchise.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), estimates that more than 3 million Yemenis have fled their homes to elsewhere in the country, and 280,000 have sought asylum in other countries.
The Saudi-led coalition air attacks caused almost two-thirds of reported civilian deaths, says the High Commissioner for Human Rights.War creates much of the dreaded waves of refugees that no one in the West wants-- but the West are happy enough to sell the bombs and planes.
Save The Children estimate at least 50,000 children died in 2017-- an average of 130 every day. They died from extreme hunger and disease--much brought on by the Saudi's blockade on the country’s ports of entry.
Today the total number of children in Yemen at risk of famine is up to 5.2 million. Already, more than two-thirds (64.5%) of Yemen’s population don’t know where their next meal is coming from.
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