Comment: Silencing critics is an art form for bullying Saudis

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Photo / AP file

There's a surprising aspect to the reaction to the possible abduction and killing of Saudi critic and Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey.

It is the notion among some US foreign policy elites that Saudi Arabia, prizing its longtime alliance with Washington, would never involve itself in such an atrocity.

Not through my eyes.

The House of Saud, rulers of that desert kingdom, is not a government. It's a gang that survives by bullying its neighbours and jerking around its so-called Western allies by weaponising the vast oil reserves upon which it perches.

The family offers a face of religious piety. But Saudi Arabia is among the most bigoted, misogynistic, human rights violators on the face of the earth. Silencing critics is a Saudi art form.

This outburst isn't coming to you from an armchair pundit.

Before joining the Post nearly 30 years ago, I was with the US Treasury Department, where I saw Saudis throwing their weight around, threatening to hold up millions of dollars in assistance to poor countries if the Palestinian Liberation Organisation didn't get a seat at annual World Bank meetings.

Further insight was gained as a commercial banker with a portfolio that included Saudi financial interests.

I have been on the streets of Riyadh and Jeddah and in business meetings at Saudi financial institutions. In a country where alcohol is banned, the best Scotch I ever tasted was in the Riyadh home of a Saudi acquaintance once based in Washington.

Ally?

They stuck it to us with their oil embargo in 1973. They thumbed their noses at President George W. Bush in 2008 when he appealed to them to bring down prices. They brazenly pumped up oil production in 2015 to make prices fall, keep market share and undermine US shale-oil development.

Our good buddy?

There is nothing to suggest that to Saudi Arabia the US is anything more than a good international customer and useful bodyguard against aggression by its archrival, Iran.

Yes, the US is now an oil exporter. But Saudi Arabia is still second only to Canada as a top source of petroleum products to the US. The US imported US$18 billion in fuels from the kingdom last year.

The Khashoggi killing is first real time foreign policy crisis Trump Administration has confronted, that won’t go away without US decisions, deals with both US values and interests and involves Congress, media and private sector in a significant way.

— Aaron David Miller (@aarondmiller2) October 14, 2018

In all, the US imported US$18.9 billion in Saudi goods, up 11.6 per cent from 2016 when US President Donald Trump was elected. To Saudi Arabia, America is the soul-stirring sound of ka-ching.

In the feud between the two Islamic nations, the Saudi monarchy has managed to firmly enlist the US on the Sunni side of a Muslim divide that takes in that country and other small Gulf kingdoms.

Their greatest fear is a theocratic Iran leading the Shia Muslim world in a struggle to dominate Islam. The ruthless Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and his family need Trump to stifle Iran at every turn.

Toward that end, we delivered the goods, loading up the Saudis with firepower galore. They then used those weapons with abandon in neighbouring Yemen.

Today, Yemen's shell-stricken capital, Sana'a, is not the city I saw in the 1980s during my call on financial institutions.

Commentator suggests any US punishment on kingdom for disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi might trigger reconciliation between Saudi and arch-rival Iran, closer ties with Putin https://t.co/w6y2j5tXBO

— Borzou Daragahi 🖊🗒 (@borzou) October 14, 2018

The sad fact is that the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen's civil war couldn't have taken out markets, weddings and a school bus carrying kids without the help of US-made bombs.

The Saudis aren't worried about a cutoff of US aid. The 33-year-old crown prince and his 82-year-old pop, King Salman, play Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, like a drum. Trump's visit to Saudi Arabia helped do the trick.

The royal court recognises that Trump is an emotionally needy narcissist. So it blared the trumpets, boomed the cannons and flew fighter jets trailed by red, white and blue over Trump's head after he disembarked onto Saudi soil.

The Saudis couldn't remain where they are on the world stage, however, without rhetorical cover from the Trump Administration.

I think Yemen is a big part of pent-up anger among journalists, analysts, scholars, and some in Congress, that's just been exploded by the brazen nature of Khashoggi's disappearance. https://t.co/Bw7KnjhKBN

— Shibley Telhami (@ShibleyTelhami) October 14, 2018

I reread the July speech of Vice-President Mike Pence, the Trump Administration's point man on religious freedom, before the Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom conference in Washington. Positioning America as a "nation of faith" that stands for religious freedom, Pence called out by name North Korea, Russia, Iran and Isis as depraved persecutors of religion. Pence, however, uttered not a word about Saudi Arabia.

Pence knows that Saudi-financed religious schools operate freely in the US. He also knows there is not one church or synagogue in the kingdom, and that criticising Islam or the royal family there may be the last thing you do.

Ah, but Pence and Trump avert their gaze. For big bucks, they will kiss Saudi backsides.

"What good does that do us?" Trump said on Friday, when asked if he would consider blocking billions in US arms sales to the Saudis over Khashoggi's disappearance. "That would not be acceptable to me."

Khashoggi is to be publicly weeped and wailed about. But in the Saudi-Trump grand view, our courageous colleague is just an annoying and complicating blip on the screen.