Time to make the moral choice on Saudi Arabia

It has been almost two months since Jamal Khashoggi was murdered in Istanbul. For all the threats and cries in Canada and the United States, nothing much has changed.

In fact, a cynic might say that things are unfolding as expected. This is what happens in a world in which your friends are the enemies of your enemies — or, more crassly, you just want their money. Call it practical.

Donald Trump is in denial over the murder; the president of the United States refuses to believe the findings of his intelligence services, who believe that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia ordered the killing.

The man who swore that Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States and claimed that millions of Americans voted illegally in 2016 now cannot believe that the Crown Prince was behind the killing. Trump says the prince says he didn’t know about it and, of course, he believes him.

In October, a shrewd observer in Washington told me what he thought would happen: the Israelis would appeal strenuously to Trump to preserve the alliance against Iran, keeping the Saudis in at all costs. The Americans would agree, shrug, and call the Middle East “a tough neighbourhood” where bad things happen. They would give the Saudis “a slap on the wrist” over Khashoggi and move on.

Congress, for its part, may still suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia. But for Trump, what’s the lousy life of a journalist against all that money and those jobs?

In Canada, things are more complicated. We don’t worry about the Israelis, the Iranians and geopolitical questions. We’re caught between commerce and conscience.

Our problem is that, like all civilized people, we are appalled that the Saudis killed Khashoggi. Before that, we were appalled that the Saudis tortured and imprisoned leading human rights activists. We said so, and the Saudis hit us with a suite of diplomatic and economic measures.

Since then, though, not much has been said. The Saudis are still selling us oil and their students remain here, at least for now. We have not cancelled the $15-billion contract between General Dynamics Land SystemsCanada and the Saudis. And there things sit.

For all intents and purposes, then, our considered silence on Saudi Arabia is no better than Trump’s brazen acquiescence.

It amounts to the same thing: a de facto acceptance that a government can kill a journalist it doesn’t like, in another country, and get away with it.

Justin Trudeau says cancelling the contract would be expensive. It might cost us a billion dollars. And if we are not paying the Saudis for walking away, we would have to compensate the workers. Would we?

As Joe Castaldo reported insightfully in The Globe and Mail on the weekend, breaking the contract would have real economic and political consequences in and around London, Ont. It would cost a lot of jobs and quite possibly cost the Liberals the two seats they hold there.

If the Liberals are considering cancelling the contract and compensating workers, that is now harder with General Motors closing its plant in Oshawa. If the Liberals have to find money for workers in Oshawa, they will have less for those in London.

But let’s ask ourselves: Is there something more important in selling arms to Saudi Arabia than politics and money? What about — dare we say it — morality?

Canada calls itself a progressive country with values as well as interests. We have never had colonies, never fought wars of conquest and never fought alone. We believe in democracy and decency, though we are often imperfect and hypocritical in choosing our trading partners, like China.

Here we are selling arms to a medieval regime that is using them to kill innocents indiscriminately in Yemen. This is helping them buttress a leadership that jails, tortures and kills without apology.

At the end of the day, if we stand for anything, we have only one choice: Cancel the contract.