Barbaric

There is little doubt that Jamal Khashoggi was tortured and killed in the most horrifyingly barbaric fashion by members of Saudi Arabian security forces in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2nd. It also seems likely that the brutal assassination was ordered by Crown Price Mohammad bin Salman.

The incident has reveled some unpleasant truths. First, it highlights just how undemocratic regimes like the Saudi monarchy exercise power, in ways that would be unacceptable in Western democracies. It illustrates graphically the corrupting influence of highly concentrated power perpetrate brutality, and just how uncivilized some people can be. Some have remarked that Al Queada, the Taliban, and ISIS are living by values that the West left behind in the middle ages, yet here is a state actor behaving as if the Enlightenment had never happened.

Second, the incident shows how a complex web of relationship moderates what would otherwise be universal outrage and condemnation. Bob Gates noted on Armanpour & Co that Saudi Arabia has been a useful and important strategic ally in the Middle East, and has at least since 9/11, provided the US with important security information.  Trump, in originally excusing and thereby implicitly condoning the murder, noted that the kingdom makes substantial purchases of US weapon systems and that supports American jobs (while simultaneously taking large numbers of Yemeni lives). It is shocking but hardly surprising that he favors money over rights and values.

And finally it gave us the sordid sight of Televangelist Pat Robertson, supposedly an expounder of Christian values telling us that one man's murder shouldn't derail a multi-billion arms deal.