US Rolls Out Red Carpet for MBS, Forgetting a Journalist’s Corpse
While The Hill focuses on photo opportunities, the historical context they omit is, shall we say, a bit messier. The Crown Prince's 2018 visit was followed a few months later by the brutal murder and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a US resident, inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. US intelligence concluded MBS approved the operation. Curiously, this detail rarely makes it into
the glossy retrospective on diplomatic pleasantries. One might wonder at the diplomatic amnesia, particularly when the Biden administration pledged to treat Saudi Arabia as a "pariah." The red carpet appears to have sanitized the stains, proving that "values-based foreign policy" is surprisingly flexible when geopolitical chess pieces, or perhaps just plain oil, are on the table. It seems the
price for a kingdom's 'strategic' partnership is often paid in moral consistency.