Dictator See, Dictator Do. And the Lies Cost Lives

I know it’s tough to be Saudi Prince Muhammed bin Salman. After all, you’re only 33, which is not enough time to know…anything about how the world really works. You’re fabulously wealthy. You head a government with no opposition and you believe it derives its power from the consent of the governed God and your own assumption that only you and your family, although not your brothers and cousins are fit to rule the country.

You also must contemplate a future for which your country is ill-prepared: a future where oil and gas are in decline and the climate, including the E-Z Bake Oven you call your country, is warming past bake and into broil territory. You’ve done some prior planning in response to this and you’re encouraging wealthy business people and other countries to invest in your future so you can keep your mandate, your power, and the billions of dollars to which you’ve become accustomed.

Oh, and then there’s that devastating war you’ve pursued in Yemen. You know, the one that’s been labeled the worst humanitarian crisis on the planet. And you continue the fighting because…um…the Iranians are your worst enemy and they’re arming Houthi rebels in Yemen and you…um…see this as a gigantic threat to your well-being. Meanwhile, there’s no end in sight mainly because the rest of the world doesn’t see what’s happening.

So the last thing you need now is for the world to focus on the torture, killing and dismemberment of a journalist–a journalist!–who lives in Virginia and wrote scathing critiques of you and your government for the Washington Post. You thought that you could slip this one past the world. After all, what’s a journalist’s life worth in Putin/Trump/Dutarte land? Journalists write stuff that makes us all feel bad and besides, it’s not very patriotic to critique your country and your dictator-leader-government.

At least Donald Trump gets it. He called you and you lied to him about the Khashoggi case and he defended you on the principles of Western jurisprudence, which you don’t really give a darn hoot about. But the point is that he believed you. And with all of this representative democracy that threatens to break out here in Saudi Arabia, it’s nice to know that you can lie to the President of the United States and he will still be your friend.

Of course, buying a few hundred billion dollars of weapons that can be used against Houthi rebels in Yemen helps your relationship with Trump, but those other Republicans are heaving religious morals at you which really, really hurts.

What really hurts the most, though, is that the world doesn’t believe your excuses. You are being questioned. You are being exposed. You have little moral authority. And we didn’t even mention that 15 of the 19 September 11 hijackers were Saudi citizens, or that your father tolerated the extreme Wahhabism that has fueled the terrorist ideologies that are presently wreaking havoc in the world.

There is blood on your hands. And there isn’t enough water in the oceans to wash it off.

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