Khashoggi’s killers
Saudi Arabia’s crimes sully American name, and our government must act.
The Trump administration should stop sending mixed signals in response to the disappearance in Turkey of a Saudi Arabian journalist who wrote for the Washington Post and lived in Virginia. President Donald Trump undercut his promise to exact “severe punishment” if Jamal Khashoggi was harmed by Saudi operatives when he ruled out canceling $110 billion in U.S. arms sales to the kingdom because it would cost American jobs.
Too often this country has let political expedience take precedence over human rights. Khashoggi’s disappearance should not provide another example of such hypocrisy.
What happened to Khashoggi sounded like something out of a second-rate horror movie. On the afternoon of October 2, the journalist walked into the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul to obtain paperwork showing he had divorced his first wife. His fiancée waited across the street.
Khashoggi should have feared stepping foot inside the embassy. His caustic criticism of the regime led by Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman had forced him into a self-enforced exile.
He said it was ludicrous to consider Saudi Arabia an ally in the fight against radical Islamists. “Saudi Arabia, which is today fighting political Islam, is the mother and father of political Islam,” he once tweeted. “The kingdom was founded on the idea of political Islam, to start with.”
Perhaps Khashoggi believed his status as a resident of the United States afforded him protection. Maybe he simply trusted his countrymen enough to walk into the Saudi embassy. But he did not walk out.
Turkish intelligence officials believe emissaries of the Saudi government interrogated, tortured and then killed Khashoggi. The Saudis initially said Khashoggi left the embassy a well man. But by Monday it was being reported that the kingdom would admit that “rogue” Saudi agents killed Khashoggi in a botched interrogation.
Interestingly, after a 20-minute telephone conversation with Saudi King Salman, Trump also said, “it sounded to me like maybe these could have been rogue killers.”
It is common for dissidents to be killed or taken prisoner, be it in troubled states, like Mexico; authoritarian countries, like Iran or Burma; or war zones, like Syria, where Houston native Austin Tice recently entered his seventh year in captivity.
But Khashoggi’s apparent fate stands out for its brutality and because a key U.S. ally may have murdered a man who chose to live in the United States, as countless political exiles before him, for the protection this country offers. Khashoggi was not a U.S. citizen, but he was one of us.
If Khashoggi was indeed murdered, he was killed because the Saudi government did not fear the consequences. It’s distressing that the Saudis may be right.
As Salman has consolidated control over his government, he has engaged in a series of escalating provocations — kidnapping the prime minister of Lebanon, arresting and executing political prisoners, torturing political rivals. Worse, Salman has expanded his country’s brutal military intervention in Yemen, which has pushed the nation to the brink of famine, disease and collapse — all with U.S. support.
In truth, the United States has little ability to protect dissidents in Syria or Iran. But we have real influence over Saudi Arabia.
That’s why we applaud the growing bipartisan consensus in Congress to take a different approach with Saudi Arabia, from halting arms sales to invoking the Magnitsky Act, which requires the president to impose sanctions on a country guilty of human rights violations.
The Saudi government’s crimes sully America’s name, too — and it is past time to do something about it.
If Khashoggi was indeed murdered, he was killed because the Saudi government did not fear the consequences. It’s distressing that the Saudis may be right.