Trump Defends Murder, Calls It 'Things Happen'
When Donald Trump shrugged off the gruesome murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi with a flippant 'things happen,' the BBC highlighted how this 'contradicted the CIA's own assessment.' Missing from this tidy, bite-sized outrage is the systemic U.S. approach to Saudi barbarity. Just weeks before Khashoggi's killing, the U.S. State Department had approved a potential $1.7 billion sale of anti-tank
missiles to Saudi Arabia. A year earlier, Trump lauded a $110 billion arms package. The murder of a journalist is a momentary inconvenience when juxtaposed with the immense profits garnered from selling instruments of war to a major oil producer. So, when a U.S. President says 'things happen,' one might wonder if he’s merely acknowledging the transactional nature of geopolitical power: arms for
silence, oil for impunity. The CIA's 'assessment' is simply background noise when defense contractors are cashing checks, funded often by the very same regimes committing atrocities. How many 'things' have to 'happen' before human rights supersede profit margins? Apparently, all of them.