It Will Stick To 45, Too

When you're a superpower, your interests never end. They are a poiuyt of never-endings, never-beginnings. They appear to be simple but the closer you look, the more complex they appear.

But the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, Saudi journalist living in the U.S., exposes our dependence upon forces beyond our control--and makes us look bad regardless of intent or global strategy.

It's clear that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salmon wanted Khashoggi to be at least detained, captured and, well, leaned on a bit. Khashoggi has written critically about his country's policies--though he has also said good things, too--and dictators (which crown princes are) don't like that. As they can in authoritarian states (which the U.S. has become), they take all criticism personally because they can't or won't look beyond it to find root causes.

Here, the press is gleefully called "the enemy of the people." It's clearly that in Saudi Arabia, too, when it does not fit the regime's definition of loyalty. But here, journalists can't be detained merely for being critical here, and they can't be sued successfully for criticism of the administration--at least, not yet. Over there, though, they have different ways to deal with dissent, however far away it's based.

Which is to say: Rendition, the fancy synonym for torture. Remember that word? It was popular during the Iraq War era, in which supposed terrorists were subjected to, uh, persuasion that they should tell U.S. captors what they knew. Those persuasion techniques included being chained to walls, wearing no more than loincloths (if that) in freezing cold cells, robbing them of sleep, and the ultimate tool--waterboarding.

When exposed at Abu Ghraib, those treatments stopped. But it took a while. We acted the same way Saudi Arabia acts normally; to a perceived enemy of the state, we made up "legal" reasons (See: John Yoo and David Carrington) to extort information from people we thought were out to get us (disguised as presidential power expanded due to an "emergency," except it has a funny way of remaining expanded).

We also connected ourselves to allies who were willing to offer "dark cells" to us to keep the general public from discovering our excesses until it was too late to stop them. One of them was Poland, which, too, is experiencing a resurgence of authoritarianism. Strange how that happens.

But the Saudis just keep on keeping on. They tried to lure Khashoggi back into Saudi Arabia through a succession of friendly persuasions (or so says the Washington Post in an article today), but Khashoggi wouldn't bite. Instead, he surrendered himself due to love. He entered the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul to receive permission to get married to his Turkish fiancee'.

He is filmed going in. He is not filmed coming out.

Saudi operatives apparently utilized that opportunity to hold Khashoggi captive inside the Consulate. There they reportedly killed him. Not only that, but they filmed both the torture and the murder itself. They brought in a chain saw to carve up his body into parts.

We know about the detainment because the Post reported that U.S. intelligence intercepted orders from bin Salmon to do so. Turkish officials say that Khashoggi was captured by a Saudi security team.

What 45 can't say about this, then, is that it's 'fake news.' His own people gathered it.

People died at the hands of Americans, too. We know that in their zeal, Americans went over the line in their information gathering. I'll bet that's just exactly what happened to Khashoggi, whose fiancee' eagerly awaited his return to be married.

She waited a lifetime. His.

All of which leaves 45 and friends in a ticklish spot. To come right out and accuse the Saudi regime with murder completely compromises the U.S. relationship with it. And that relationship has another linchpin that is sacrosanct, and has been for some time now: Israel.

Saudi Arabia is supposed to be the balancing act between Israel and its enemies, especially Iran. Iran and Saudi Arabia have populations that worship two different types of Islam. The U.S. has supplied Saudi Arabia with jets and weapons that would, if necessary, counterbalance whatever dangerous influence Iran might supply to the Middle East region--such as an attack upon Israel, which Saudi Arabia cannot stand but which ensures its military hardware from us. All of this is there to ensure that the U.S. gets oil from both countries, which together comprise nearly half of the foreign oil we import from the rest of the world.

All that is tied up in sustaining U.S. corporations. And you know how fond 45 is of sustaining corporations. It is his religion. It overwhelms all other considerations. Yesterday, he was quoted as saying that he's not going to get in the way of anything that employs that many Americans.

Oh, I see. Saving jobs takes priority over saving lives. Explain that to Ford employees who will be laid off because of the ridiculous set of tariffs against China.

You also know how fond 45 is of praise and being made to look great. Saudi officials went out of their ways to do so when 45 visited their country last year. They literally rolled out the red carpet for him.

Which is to say: They played him the way Russians have. They are buying him. He knows that. He loves it.

But now he's trapped and he knows that, too. When that happens and someone in the press asks about that, as happened just yesterday, he makes up generalizations, pretends that he cares, and says he'll look into it. But he said a single word that was revelatory because he can't help himself, a single word that cut off that line of inquiry: "Okay?"

"Okay?", from him, means "get off my back. I have now said that I care about this, and I'll take no more questions about it." If you can, go and replay the response. Listen for the tone of voice. It's quick. It's dismissive. It's obvious.

What that means, as it has about so many other things that have corrupted him and this awful presidency, is that he wants to buy time to sweep this under the rug for a while, to let other things emerge that, due to their own immediacy (and exposing the unrelenting incompetence of this horrible band of operatives), dwarf two things he cares nothing about: journalists who don't write what he wants and foreigners who cause him headaches, meaning they aren't grateful enough to be here and remain submissive.

Oh, he'll respond, all right, but weeks later, when he has more information and lets us believe that he either knew it all along, or he was statesmanlike in waiting to determine the real motives or the real events. In any event, we will be inclined to throw up our hands again and move on--and the U.S. will be complicit in a genuine murder, whether it might have had the "duty to warn" Khashoggi or not if it knew that he was in danger. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has not commented yet.

Senator Lindsay Graham, he of the temper tantrum of the Kavanaugh nomination fight, says that Saudi Arabia will be in big trouble with the U.S., and the White House is discussing ways to 'punish' the Saudis for this horrible crime. Will such 'punishment' fit the offense?

Why do I doubt this? Because 45 has blown up the nuclear agreement with Iran. That will no doubt cause Iran to react (if it already hasn't) in a way hostile to American interests. Recall that Iran's terrorist friends, Hezbollah, have conducted attacks upon U.S. allies in Europe. It isn't too great a stretch to suppose that it is planning something right here, right now, in revenge.

In just a few years, too, Iran will have nuclear capabilities to hold a sword of Damocles over Israel's head because it no longer has a treaty with the U.S. that it needs to observe, however imperfectly it had done so. Enter the Saudis. Or not, because we will have made them look bad for their little act of rendition gone wrong.

We can't afford to have that happen without fomenting a ferocious war in the Middle East. Remember: We will never abandon Israel. No administration has since 1947.

So this has to go away for 45. But it won't. Along with the Mueller report, this will have a very sticky way of returning--kind of like that little hunk of toilet paper that stuck to his shoe while boarding Air Force One the other day.

It's disposable, like he thinks of journalists. But it will also smell bad. Very bad.