Twenty years ago, a small delegation organized by Voices in the Wilderness lived in Baghdad while U.S. cruise missiles attacked more than 100 targets in Iraq. Following four days of bombing, known as “Operation Desert Fox,” our group visited various Iraqis who had survived direct hits. One young girl handed me a large missile fragment, saying “Merry Christmas.”
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman al-Saud, and UAE Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, are close friends and allies, who jointly lead the war against Houthi-led Yemen. On Sunday afternoon, November 18th, a leading Turkish newspaper, Yeni Şafak, reported the two leaders to have also collaborated in hiding the murder on October 2nd in Istanbul of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
The surgical dismembering of Jamal Khashoggi has sent the military establishments of several countries into a tizz. Arms manufacturers are wondering whether this is an inconvenient blip, a ruffling moral reminder about what they are dealing with. Autocratic regimes indifferent to the lives of journalists are wondering whether the fuss taken about all this is merely the fuss endured, till the next bloody suppression. But importantly, those states notionally constituting the West may have to reconsider the duping strategy that the House of Saud has executed with the deft efficiency of the
You can get the death penalty in Saudi Arabia for apostasy, adultery and sodomy, among other crimes, but… something tells me that the fifteen plus individuals involved in the recent “rogue” murder of Jamal Khashoggi — “rogue” meaning MBS, the “reformist” Saudi leader, had zero knowledge of the planned assassination — will NOT be subject to capital punishment.
It seems the UK trains killers and supplies weapons with no regard for the humanitarian consequences.
The toxic situation (by which I mean the continuing mega-slaughter of innocents) surrounding the Saudi crown prince’s royal welcome to London will have reminded many of the Vietnam-era chant of peace activists in response to the lies and blunders and excuses at that time: “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?”
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Back on 20th May 2017 I wrote how Saudi Arabia’s manic overspending on Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s runaway industrialisation programme, its over-the-top arms purchases, and the huge sums it is spending on its wildly over-ambitious foreign policy, are setting the scene for Saudi Arabia’s eventual bankruptcy.
I also said that the degree to which all sense of reality has been lost is shown by the extraordinary $68 million Saudi Arabia spent on welcoming US President Trump.
As my colleague Adam Garrie has written, Qatar has rebuffed the insanely worded ultimatum served on it 2 weeks ago by the Saudi led coalition. A meeting that coalition held thereafter in Cairo however failed to come up with any new measures. Instead it announced – weakly – that the current ineffective blockade of Qatar would be continued indefinitely.
King Salman of Saudi Arabia has now appointed his 31 year old son Prince Mohammed bin Salman his Crown Prince, ousting his nephew, former Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, who had previously supervised Saudi Arabia’s security forces, and who is credited by some people with defeating the challenge within Saudi Arabia that extreme Wahhabi terrorists connected to Al-Qaeda posed to the ruling family.
