George Rebane
[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 21 November 2018.]
President Trump announced yesterday that the US would not pursue the Khashoggi murder by Saudi government agents. The president’s reasoning was clear and eminently rational. As anticipated, our leftwing received it with howls of disapproval that accused the president of all manner of sins violating international norms founded on morals and ethics and law and human rights and God knows what else they could pile on, when the decision actually violated nothing of the sort. BTW, full disclosure, even some Republican politicians got their noses out of joint.
Jamal Ahmad Khashoggi was a dissident Saudi journalist whose commentary and news coverage were critical of the kingdom’s ruling Saud family. In mid-east countries like Saudi Arabia you don’t get to mess with the rulers without some consequences coming your way. Let’s face it, that is their culture, these are not nations of laws with guaranteed rights and constitutional strictures which prescribe what their governments can and cannot do. Most nations in the second and third worlds are ruled by ruthless men who are corrupt autocrats at best, and cruel tyrants at worst.
America and other western countries that claim to be governed by laws have always made nice with these less-developed and more brutal countries for the simple reason that it was in our national interest to do so. Everyone who has done even a little bit of reading understands this, and most certainly can see through any blather from their own politicians who claim to deal only with other nice countries and not put up with the bad ones. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth – all countries have always traded and allied themselves with other countries to get a good deal, or when needing help to defend themselves, or whump some other enemy.
And as the Left constantly points out, the United States has been a poster child of such pragmatic relationships. We have toasted, feted, partied, and made deals with all kinds of unsavory regimes over the decades. Regimes that have been horribly brutal to their own citizens – imprisoning, torturing, executing people literally by the millions. Consider the trading we did with the USSR and its satellite communist clients during the Cold War. Consider the warm relationships we have had with African and Latin American tin pot dictators when they had minerals and ag products we needed, and in turn would buy things from us that they couldn’t make. And then there’s China.
Did all this stop when the Wall came down in 1989 or when the USSR collapsed in 1991? Not at all. We still did business and made alliances to serve the greater American interests in the never-ending geo-strategic chess game. And yes, now and then we would sanction some country or refuse a diplomatic exchange with another, telling people of our high standards and of their low standards. But when one looked behind the curtain, it was clear that the decision was political, and that we really did not need what they had to improve American lives.
So now the Saudis execute one of their own on foreign soil but in their own consulate, and the world’s ‘moral majority’, led by the US and its allies, gets their collective undies in a bundle, decrying the murder and demanding confessions and justice from the Saudis. All this against the backdrop of the mid-east, which is a very complex place with ongoing wars, longstanding feuds, along with all major powers jockeying to advance their own agendas for regional hegemony, trading partnerships, mineral and energy rights, and to thwart the designs of their global rivals. And everything would get much worse if our relationship with Saudi Arabia goes south.
The only world leader who decides to see through all this posturing and preening is our president, Donald J Trump. After quietly studying the situation and counting everyone’s guns, he stands up and states that we have other fish to fry with the Saudis – like our anti-Iranian alliance and some hundreds of billions of dollars of trade that involves thousands of US jobs. And our suddenly objecting to one more Saudi murder is really not worth blowing the whole deal.
So, despite the public gnashing of teeth and rending of garment by Trump’s political opponents, everyone understands that this is the correct way to end the affair. Yes, a bad thing happened in Turkey, but it did not impact our interests. However, losing the order for shipping the Saudis our fancy armaments and other things so that they will remain our ally in the region, trumps all other factors in this case. And our president has the wisdom and courage to solve the problem when no one else could do better than just bitch and moan. In sum, maybe Trump, with warts and all, didn’t put a nice bow on it. But whatever his other faults, many Americans can still support a president who tells us like it is and should be.
My name is Rebane, and I also expand on this and related themes on Rebane’s Ruminations where the addended transcript of this commentary is posted with relevant links, and where such issues are debated extensively. However, my views are not necessarily shared by KVMR. Thank you for listening.
[Addendum] To put the Khashoggi murder into a better perspective, we have to realize that tens (maybe more) of reporters and journalists are killed annually by people who don’t like what they write and poke their noses into. Many (most?) of these killings are directly commissioned by governments unhappy with the targeted journalists. And an overwhelming number of such killings are obviously due to the reporters’ output which exposed a government or got too close for comfort to a powerful government official. All of such people in high places, especially in shithole countries, have intimate connections with their criminal elements, which makes it easy enough to finger someone and pay chump change for having him murdered.
Consider that in Mexico alone 30 journalists were killed in the last twelve months. Many by cartels and gangs, but certainly a good number at the behest of someone in the Mexican government. The individuals’ work products clearly indicated from what quarter the unfortunate schlub drew fire, yet our and other western governments totally ignore such killings – and no one on either side of the aisle raises an eyebrow. Why? It’s the money you dumb sumbich. Trade with Mexico is at such a high level that we don’t give a big rat’s ass what they do to their own south of the border. So, in that light, getting riled up about a Khashoggi is more than a bit hypocritical and humorous, and, when it is so framed, is definitely an example of fake news.
Apropos to this, does anyone else notice how many things Trump gets blamed for as the only or first one committing some assigned sin, when the record is clear that politicians right and left before him have done equal or more egregious versions of the same sin for decades? But in today’s post-intellectual age, anyone on the media can claim anything, and a large enough of the electorate will believe it to throw the election process out of kilter – again, read Bryan Caplan. And again, if such reports are framed to make the reader believe that Trump flew solo in this or that infraction, then that also is fake news. It is this kind of ‘fake news’ (aka sophisticated lies) that Trump correctly accuses of being an enemy of the people.
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