Joe Biden is scheduled to visit the Middle East sometime this summer – likely in July — and his itinerary, though not fixed in amber, is said to include Israel and Saudi Arabia. And of course he will, during his Israel visit, go to Ramallah to pay his respects to Mahmoud Abbas. Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff is not happy with the President visiting Riyadh, and has urged him to cancel any plans to do so, because of the Saudi Crown Prince’s involvement in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. A report on Schiff’s opposition can be found here: “Biden Should Not Visit Saudi, Meet Crown Prince, Democratic Rep. Schiff Says,” Algemeiner, June 5, 2022:
US President Joe Biden should not visit Saudi Arabia or meet its Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who approved an operation to capture or kill murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi, according to US intelligence, a leading Democratic lawmaker said on Sunday.…
Asked if Biden, who on Friday acknowledged the possibility he may visit Saudi Arabia soon, should go to the oil exporter and meet the crown prince, its de facto ruler, Representative Adam Schiff said: “In my view, no.”
“I wouldn’t go. I wouldn’t shake his hand. This is someone who butchered an American resident, cut him up into pieces and in the most terrible and premeditated way,” Schiff, who chairs the House of Representatives intelligence committee, told CBS’s “Face the Nation” program.
Saudi Arabia has denied any involvement by the crown prince in the killing and rejected a February 2021 US intelligence report that assessed that he “approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey to capture or kill” Khashoggi.
No one doubts that the Crown Prince was behind the murder of Khashoggi, nor that the American government was properly appalled by that murder. But it is the barbarous dismemberment, rather than the fact of his killing, that has such a grip on our imaginations. Had he simply been shot, Khashoggi’s killing would have been deplored, but then filed away with all the other political assassinations carried out in the Middle East. Though Mahmoud Abbas gave his goons permission to kill Nizar Banat, the keenest critic of the P.A. President’s corruption, by beating him to death, does anyone think that will stop Biden from visiting Ramallah?
But there are reasons of state that override the need to ostentatiously display our outrage. During World War II, Joseph Stalin was responsible for the murders of many millions of innocent Russians. These included: the mass killing of the kulaks; the 1932-1933 Holodomor, or man-made famine, in the Ukraine, in which five million peasants died; the 1930s purge trials of the Old Bolsheviks, followed by their execution; the axe murder of Trotsky in Mexico City by Stalin’s agent, Ramón Mercader, and much more. Yet when World War II began, the American government did not hesitate to send Stalin $180 billion worth of military aid, including:
• 400,000 jeeps & trucks
• 14,000 airplanes
• 8,000 tractors
• 13,000 tanks
• 1.5 million blankets
• 15 million pairs of army boots
• 107,000 tons of cotton
• 2.7 million tons of petrol products
• 4.5 million tons of food
And we were right to do so. In the European theatre of World War II, we were in a war against Hitlerism, and the Soviet Union was our most powerful ally. The millions of victims of Soviet brutality were not forgotten, but put to one side in order to fight, with our Soviet ally, what was understood to be a war for survival.
The Saudi regime may be brutal, but it is much less so than the regime which rules Iran, where many thousands of political prisoners have been summarily executed since 1979. Iran is the mortal enemy of Saudi Arabia; it prompts its ally, the Houthis in Yemen, to attack Saudi oil installations and airbases. It promises to “annihilate” Israel, and has supplied its Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, with weaponry, including 150,000 rockets and missiles, to be used in a future war against the Jewish state. It is the enemy of the United States, which for the Iranian regime remains the Great Satan that must be contained; Iran has not hesitated to fire on American bases both in Iraq, in 2020, and in Syria, in 2021. It wants to drive the Americans out of the Middle East.
Iran is a threat to regional, and to world, peace. Saudi Arabia is not. The Saudis have the power, by ratcheting up production, to harm Iran, by taking away market share from Tehran as well as depressing oil prices. At this point, we need the cooperation of Saudi Arabia on oil for another reason. Russia has already cut off much of the oil that it used to sell to Western Europe. The Europeans – our allies – need the Americans to prod the Saudis to increase their production. If Biden refuses to meet with the Crown Prince, as Adam Schiff desires, how likely is it that the Saudis will be in an accommodating mood, willing to produce more oil to satisfy the Americans?
Furthermore, Saudi Arabia allows the American Air Force to maintain its forces at four major bases. Continued use of those bases, which allows the Americans to pre-position both planes and pilots in order to better threaten Iran, might be endangered if the Crown Prince is snubbed by Biden in such a public and humiliating fashion, in order to satisfy the moral sense of Adam Schiff.
Finally, the Crown Prince, for all his faults, is the leader of the reformists in Saudi Arabia. He has curbed the power of the mutawa’in, the religious police, by taking away their power to arrest offenders; he has allowed women to leave their houses without a male guardian, to travel abroad without a male relative; to drive by themselves without a male in the car. MbS has reopened the cinemas in Saudi Arabia after a long closure; , Western movies can now be shown. He has made plans for a $500-billion investment in four megacities, as he tries to wean the Saudi economy from its near-total dependence on oil.
There are royals who resent his quick rise through the hierarchy, where more senior princes were skipped over by King Salman to make his son Muhammad the Crown Prince. And there is also resentment of MbS’s bullying ways, most notably when he held some 400 hundred Saudi royals, tycoons, even generals, captive in the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton, even having some beaten, until they agreed to disgorge a total of $106 billion in ill-gotten gains to the Saudi state. This display of his power has led to bad blood between him and some of the other princes. If Biden passes on a meeting with the Crown Prince, after having announced that one was to be held, this might be interpreted by MbS’s enemies as a sign of the Crown Prince’s fading fortunes, and might even encourage an attempt at a palace coup. Despite the murder of Khashoggi, the American government should do nothing to weaken Mohammed bin Salman’s position at home. In Saudi Arabia, he is the best we can hope for.
The Crown Prince is also known to favor ever closer ties with Israel, and may be willing to have his country join the Abraham Accords. The obstacle is King Salman, who has declared his unwillingness to join the Abraham Accords until the Palestinians have their own state. But the King is 86 and in poor health. Once the Crown Prince ascends to the throne, he will be able to join the Accords. We already know that he does not intend to sacrifice Saudi national interests, including what membership in the Abraham Accords, can bring — he sees what the UAE has managed to accomplish with its Israeli partner — in order to satisfy the Palestinians. In 2018, the Crown Prince, in exasperation, told an importuning Mahmoud Abbas that he “should take whatever deal the Americans offer.”
“Until Saudi Arabia makes a radical change in terms of (its) human rights, I wouldn’t want anything to do with him,” Schiff said of the crown prince, often called MBS.
He also rejected arguments that Biden should visit Saudi Arabia to try to get it to increase oil production and lower US gasoline prices, a problem for Biden and his fellow Democrats ahead of the November midterm congressional elections.
For all of these reasons — ramped-up oil production, American use of bases on Saudi soil, Saudi willingness to join the Abraham Accords — Biden should reject Congressman Schiff’s opposition to a meeting with the Crown Prince. The Iranians have been at war with us, with Israel, and with Saudi Arabia since the very beginning of the Islamic Republic, in 1979. Saudi Arabia, as the swing producer, is the state that can help the most in keeping oil price from skyrocketing even further, and taking away what remains of Iran’s market share. And though we have the use of airbases in Qatar and the UAE, the four we have in the Kingdom dwarf those others.
While saying he understood Saudi influence over oil prices, Schiff said he viewed that as “a compelling argument” for the United States to wean itself off oil “so we don’t have despots and murderers calling the shots.”
Schiff may not realize it, but we can’t wait until we are “weaned off oil,” which will take decades, to deal as he might like with Saudi Arabia. The world market right now needs more Saudi oil to be lifted, so as to bring down the price and help rescue the economies of the Western world from sky-high inflation. Those he calls “despots and murderers” are, in fact, one person – the Saudi Crown Prince, whose record on dealing with political enemies is not worse than those of many Middle Eastern and North African regimes, including those in Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Syria, and Iraq, as well as the “despots and murderers” of Hamas in Gaza, and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. As long as the Crown Prince, soon to be King, continues unopposed to discharge the responsibilities of rule, MBS will bring more reforms to what was, before he came to power, a sclerotic Saudi state. Does Biden want to refuse to go through with an announced visit to Saudi Arabia, thereby humiliating the Crown Prince, and likely leading to the unwelcome consequences that you and I, but not Adam Schiff, can foresee?
Infidel says
While I was interested in Saudi reforms the last few years, I’ve stopped following them joining the mob against Hindus. That said, Biden made it a point to dump on Saudi Arabia when he came to power, and now that he needs them, the Saudis showed him his place by first openly supporting the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and now following up by raising oil prices. For those who’re outraged by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, one fails to see how buying oil from Saudi Arabia instead – a country that openly supports them – is being morally supportive of Ukraine
And once Biden visits Riyadh, Saudi Arabia will get a chance to humiliate him, and either jack up prices, or cut production to hurt Biden even more. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy
CogitoErgoSum says
The problem is that nothing that Saudi Arabia might do will affect Joe Biden in the least bit. The man is a multi-millionaire and he could care less about the price of gas at the pump. I doubt if he even drives a car anymore but if gas prices ever do become bothersome to him he would just go out and buy himself a new electric car .. or two. As for any personal humiliation, I think he is too stupid to comprehend when he has been insulted. His repetition of “Let’s go, Brandon” supports that.
Sid says
Moral guidance from Pinocchio.
gary fouse says
Biden should visit any other country. He only embarrasses the USA.
somehistory says
John Wayne Gacy, Jeffery Dahmer, Ed Gein, …were all “residents” of the U.S. They were all born in this country, unlike the “journalist.”
Just because someone resides in the U.S. much like biden resides in the WH, doesn’t confer some kind of wonderfulness upon them.
Do other countries not have the same authority as the U.S. to get rid of people they see as a threat?
a schiff is all for persecuting those who were in D.C. on Jan. 6, treating them as traitors and keeping them locked up for the rest of their lives. and they are all “residents” of the U.S. Citizens, too.
a. schiff is no good. and it doesn’t really matter if his “president” and a “resident” of the U.S. goes anywhere. biden is always likely to lie and say things that his staff walks back or clarifies.
Rueben Singh says
I saw a speech by Adam Schiff to the US Congress.
He said words to the effect that
“the USA must encourage and help Ukraine to fight the Russians in Ukraine, so that Americans will not have to fight Russians in America”
What bullshit, Russia’s economy is about $1.5 trillion, about the same size as Italy or Spain, under what bloody circumstances would they be able to invade America??
Infidel says
Not just that, this Ukraine war has shown up Russia as a paper tiger. Right now, only reason they are continuing this war is to save face
If the Dems are serious about supporting Ukraine, they need to give former Warsaw Pact countries the go-ahead to send their residual Soviet era hardware to Ukraine: that’s the type of weaponry that the Ukrainians are familiar w/. Also, drop the demand that Ukraine not target Russia: if Russian troops can hit targets in Ukraine, Ukraine should be allowed to target cities like Belgorod, Rostov-on-Don, Bryansk, Moscow and so on
Oh, and Adam, I suggest you open an investigation into your colleagues Ilhan and Rashida and check whether they’re agents of Putin. They were the only ones to have voted against the measures against Russia: not one Republican did
gravenimage says
Actually, the Ukrainians are now *very* familiar with advanced weaponry. Just see the effectiveness of things like Javelin missiles.
Sid says
Mission creep.
The purpose of NATO was to discourage Soviet adventurism by countering the Warsaw Pact. The purpose of NATO now is to scare the crap out of the world by provoking war with a nuclear power as a distraction from the vivisection of the USofA by its purported President.
gravenimage says
Wait–now opposing an unprovoked invasion is “provoking”?
And no–the Ukraine is defending herself because she was invaded. The idea that Ukraine wants her people to be raped and liquidated and is only resisting due to pressure from Biden is ludicrous.
OLD GUY says
Adam Schiff, I guess he misses the TV cameras and stardom he had in the TV series trying to prosecute the President of the United States on a Russian hoax’s created by Hillary C. I think he just missed best actor in a sit-com to Nancy and Chuck. Bad actors just seem to never go away.
Andrew Blackadder says
But,but,but, Obama BOWED DOWN to the King of Saudi Arabia where his mouth was at the level of the Kings Penis, Im just sayin…and I would have thought Old Joe may do the same thing and if he does go there what with Jill wear on her head… Now thats a photo op.
Kassogi was NOT an American Citizen, he was a Saudi Citizen with the legal residence of living in the USA, (Green Card Alien).
Shifty Schiff is such a low life bottom feeding moron.
gravenimage says
Really, it would be better if no American Presidents or other Western leaders were kowtowing to the bloody Saudis.