President Biden, throughout his campaign, promised he would approach Saudi Arabia differently than former President Trump and hold Prince Mohammed bin Salman responsible for his alleged role in the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
That has not happened.
Back in November 2019, Biden said that if elected, he would make it clear to Saudi Prince bin Salman that he would not be sold new weapons and “we were going to, in fact, make them pay the price and make them the pariah that they are.”
On Monday, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, announced the Prince will not face any punishment from the U.S…. and it’s basically Saudi business as usual.
“Our national security team believes that going after the network responsible for these actions is the best way to prevent a crime like this from ever happening again,” she said.
The move comes days after a U.S. intelligence report was released that tied the Prince to Khashoggi’s killing. The U.S. determined the Prince “approved” the operation, which was carried out in Istanbul. It has long been reported that Khashoggi was killed and then dismembered inside the Saudi consulate in the city.
William D. Hartung, the director of the Arms and Security Program at the Center for International Policy, wrote in The New York Times on Monday that President Biden’s decision to not punish MBS [Mohammed bin Salman] “is morally unacceptable. It is also bad foreign policy.”
He wrote that Biden should reverse course: “As a candidate for president, Joe Biden promised that America would not ‘check its values at the door’ when it came to dealing with the Saudi government. Now is the time to prove it.”
TRENDPOST: Considering America’s non-stop march to wars, the nation’s “values” have long been checked at the door. As vice president from 2008 to 2016 under Barack Obama, Joe Biden strongly supported the administration’s racking up eight years of non-stop wars.
As for Biden backtracking on his campaign pledge to hold the Saudi Prince accountable for Khashoggi’s death and deal on stricter terms with Saudi Arabia … Barack Obama lied his way into office vowing to end U.S. military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
