The issue is American hypocrisy.
Saudi Arabia is both one of the most oppressive governments in the world, and our closest military ally in the Muslim world.
We also have a massive arms deal with them in which they purchase, what, over $100 million (or is it billion) worth from us.
Trump came out and basically said, “yeah they’re evil, but cha-ching!”
MSNBC is reporting that he was wearing an Apple watch and had it set to continuously send an audio stream to a server, so the authorities have audio of everything that happened.
I can’t imagine that he anticipated being murdered. Presumably he wouldn’t have gone in if he suspected that. Maybe as a reporter he just thought that he should record on the off chance something newsworthy happened.
So who got the audio stream out of his encrypted iCloud account?
… or was this a story from Turkish intelligence to deflect from their bugging?
They said that he left his phone outside with his girlfriend, so may the phone was logged in, or maybe his girlfriend knew his password.
The murdered journalist was a Saudi living in the US and who wrote regularly for the Washington Post. Saudi Arabia murdered him in Turkey and Trump said it was no reason to stop selling arms to the Saudis. As Pax Americana ends and authoritarianism rises, despotic regimes like Saudi Arabia feel emboldened, confident that there is no check on them, even when they kill outside of their own country.
Sadly, I think there’s some truth to that.
You know, I think the Saudis might well be innocent here. I mean, there is obvious but on the face of it deniable action like the Markov killing of the Salisbury poisoning, and then there is well…this. The Saudis have to know that even if the guy tripped his own shoelaces and broke his hip inside the consulate, they would be blamed. Seriously, if they intended to kill him, at this rate, it would have been better to take him back home and set up an appontment for him at chop chop square.
Looking evil is “meh”. Looking stupid on the other hand…
It doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it? Just how desperately did they need this guy dead, and couldn’t they have arranged a fake burglary or mugging where they’d at least have some plausible deniability rather than do it in a way that points right at them? Sure they didn’t know he was recording but him entering the building then never leaving is enough to raise major questions.
On the other hand, if they didn’t do it then the government of Turkey must have faked it all and his fiancee must be in on it. Why would Turkey want to do that? If they did, then what about his fiancee? Was she a plant all along; a government agent who seduced him and then agreed to marry him all so that she could tell a story about him entering the embassy building then never leaving it? It all seems too convoluted.
I think a clumsy stupid murder by the Saudis may be the least improbable explanation.
Killing people, even your own nationals, other other country’s soil is Not A Good Thing. Where do you draw the line? (Note: embassies are not part of that countries territory. It is still the host country’s territory.)
There are some really bad things going on now that the US has officially declared that Human Rights abuses are not our concern anymore. Countries used to be somewhat concerned about getting flak over doing this. Now it’s no longer a big problem.
Another example: the head of Interpol was arrested and detained in China. They kept it a secret for a while. While a Chinese national, this is an important enough person that keeping his arrest secret for a couple weeks is astonishing. They know they will not suffer any flashback on this from the US.
Expect these sorts of things to get much worse in the next few years. Much worse.
We are entering a new age of tyranny. And the US is helping, not averting, it.
This scenario is suggested in this article in The Atlantic.
One theory circulating is that the whole thing was an attempted rendition that went bad. I imagine the guy was smart enough to know that going to Saudi Arabia was a bad idea for him. Not that “setting up an appointment on chop chop square” for him is exactly what I would call “innocent” in any case…
The Atlantic article said this:
If this is true, why does noone seem to be talking about it?
Because it’s not relevant.
Media attention does not correlate with some judgement about how bad a murder is. Russia and Turkey tend to kill Russian and Turkish journalists, who the rest of the world have likely not heard much about, and to do so in ways that don’t absolutely link the murders to the government.
The Saudi’s apparently went ahead and murdered … okay, a Saudi journalist, but one who’s a Washington post columnist and living in Turkey. And they did it inside their consulate, which doesn’t really do much for “plausible deniability”.
The Magnitsky act punishes individual government officials rather than the country/government, and was expanded to the world in 2016:
That Atlantic article says that Turkish officials say that there is video of his murder. MSNBC has been saying that a Turkish newspaper is reporting that there is audio proving murder from Khashoggi’s Apple watch.
Which one is true, if either? Are both things true? Is neither true? If there is video, what is the source of that video? Do Apple watches have cameras? Does Turkey have hidden surveillance equipment in the Saudi embassy?
There’s an interesting article about Khashoggi in the Spectator, written by John R. Bradley, who knew Khashoggi well for years, and is an expert on Saudi Arabia.
Interesting points from the article:
Besides the whole bit about doing killings on other countries’ turf, and this reporter being a U.S. resident and reporter for the Washington Post and other Western news outlets, there’s been this debate going about MBS, the de facto ruler of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, who had to have authorized this operation.
To many U.S. foreign policy critics, he’s looked like a nasty piece of work from the get-go, but of course the U.S. government is usually happy to get along with whoever runs KSA, and the Tom Friedmans of the world thought he was great. This certainly is a big mark in the ledger in favor of the critics’ POV.
And that’s part of a deeper debate about whether we should, or need to, be so cozy with KSA, given their horrible human rights record at home, and increasingly abroad (i.e. Yemen). It’s been argued for awhile now that they need us as a market for their oil at least as much as we need their oil.
And of course there’s the discussion of whether Trump’s authoritarianism basically gives the green light to thuggery by rulers across the globe. This seems to support that proposition as well.
We are told this about Khashoggi? Maybe someone’s saying it, but it sure hasn’t been noticeable in anything I’d read about him. No question but that there was daylight between him and the regime, otherwise they wouldn’t have killed him, but I haven’t seen any accounts that turned him into some sort of fighter for freedom and democracy.
Does he substantiate that with links? Or should we downweight this Bradley guy for slinging bullshit?
Thing is, such regimes care less and less about being blamed. That is the frightening reality. In face they may consider the deterrence effect of being known to do such things to be more valuable that whatever weak political pushback they were expecting.
Perhaps you only read a restricted range of news sources. It took me all of 5 min on Google News to find the following, casting him in a very positive light:
"Conversations with some of Khashoggi’s close friends, who shared texts they exchanged with him over the years, reveal a man whose greatest passion became journalism itself — which he expressed in a fearless, unblinking commitment to the cleansing power of the truth, regardless of the personal cost."Washington Post
“Khashoggi was widely known and respected inside and outside the kingdom for his literary talent, political acumen and principled opposition to Mohammed’s increasing authoritarianism and arrogance.” Washington Post
“Considered an authoritative voice on Saudi affairs, Khashoggi has also been a regular contributor on international news outlets. … '“I have left my home, my family and my job, and I am raising my voice. To do otherwise would betray those who languish in prison. I can speak when so many cannot. I want you to know that Saudi Arabia has not always been as it is now. We Saudis deserve better,” he wrote. In his writing he accused the Saudi government of ignoring real extremists in its crackdown, and he compared the crown prince to Russian leader Vladimir Putin.” BBC
“He supported some of the general reforms that MbS was trying to put forward, including more rights for women. But he felt that if Saudi Arabia was going to go through a transformation, that the people had to be part of the conversation. And the Saudi leadership and MbS in particular increasingly moved in a direction where they didn’t want any questioning of this new direction. And Khashoggi couldn’t bring himself to agree with that. And I think that he was pained to have this break with the Saudi regime. He didn’t want it.” NPR