Our Great allies the despotic Saudis kill a Washington Post Journalist.

The lack of self awareness is standard operating procedure for them these days.

 

Trump looking very weak again.... Russia and now this...

 

Nikki Haley abruptly resigned the day after the murder. Interesting timeline.

 

trump changes his story...

 

So your proposal is to send a message to the world that we don't have principles and won't hold authoritarians responsible when they murder critics of their regime?

I disagree with that stance, but if that's what you believe then that's what you believe.

 

I'm find with condemning it, but what are you proposing be done?

 

What a total yo yo. Trump is such a pathological liar he catches himself sometimes.

 

Hmm... I guess its now OK to consider it at act that should be condemned. I guess trump's pivot made that OK for you...

 

In other words, there *are* ties between kushner and mbs...

 

I liked this part of the interview...

In the interview, Trump defended Kushner as doing a “very good job” but acknowledged that he and the crown prince, both in their 30s, are relatively young for the amount of power they wield.

Trump could easily fix that with Kushner.

 

This is what happens when you have two royal families dealing with each other. Our government now mirrors Saudi Arabia.

 

Just like with Russia, those on the left are demanding war over the Saudis killing a Saudi....basically anything that would hurt the US is what our friends on the left are calling for these days.

 

He was an Islamist, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, a royal family insider, the nephew of a Saudi arms dealer, a close friend of Osama Bin Laden since high school, served with him when he was a mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 80s, and eulogized him after he was taken out by the US Navy, was a Turkophile that admired Erdogan, hated Sisi in Egypt, and was enraged by MBS's warming of relations with Israel. He was a supporter of Al Nusra in Syria, but, he's well-respected in establishment Western circles because he sugarcoated all those things in language about democracy and freedom and got paid to do that for the Washington Post.

He represents exactly the sort of element MBS wants to flush down the toilet and no one should expect him to be kind about it. What would you expect of a regime that blockades an entire neighboring country and bombs its civilian population to do to an Islamist royal family confidant that has worked his whole life to support your bitterest enemies?

 

The reporter was all of that?

 

Well...don't expect the Washington Post to report on it accurately, but even the NY TImes admits some of these things. Google it and I'll leave the judgement of the accuracy of the sources to you.

 

That's certainly interesting and a quick search shows that a lot of it is likely true. Sounds like even more of a reason for us to not care THAT much about the Saudis killing one of their own.

 

It's true that he was all that, but that doesn't make it ok to murder him in a consulate.

But as I said, we should be at least as concerned about Raif Badawi and others.

If MBS wants to do something for his image, he should free Badawi and others who are held without justification.

 

What does 2 Chains think of this whole mess?

 

It couldn't happen to a nicer guy, MBS is misunderstood ?

 

I think we should be at least as concerned about the thousands of people Saudi Arabia kills with US and French weapons and support in this proxy war, instead of expressing righteous indignation over a Washington Post columnist with questionable loyalties that frequented Beltway dinner parties.

We should also be careful of flushing and gushing over Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for his secular reforms and being outraged when we can't have it both ways when we see what that reform looks like -- which is dismembering influence peddlers who run the grey areas between Western power and the people who want to restore a Sunni Caliphate.

We should also ask why Thomas "Everything is About to Change in the Middle East for the Better" Friedman still has a job or why people still buy his books when he was been wrong about everything he has ever written about the Middle East.

There is this strange consensus in the West with the House of Saud that Iran is more dangerous to world stability than the people who gave us ISIL, the September 11 attacks, and put theocratic Sunni extremist parties into power. The US and the Saudi coalition is a lot more concerned with regime change in Iran than with agitating our "moderate" Jihadist allies with the rights of secularist freethinkers like Raif Badawi (who I agree should be our chief concern) that have always been the easiest to throw under the bus.

We have have political leaders in France and the US who would prefer not to allocate the taxes of their constituents to engage in any of this intrigue, but they are unfortunately a minority that's seen as bad for "jobs."