Revealed Through Gross Ineptitude

"We assess that Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey to capture or kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi."

"We base this assessment on the Crown Prince's control of decision-making in the Kingdom, the direct involvement of a key adviser and members of Muhammad bin Salman's protective detail in the operation and the Crown Prince's support for using violent measures to silence dissidents abroad, including Khashoggi."

U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence report 

Khashoggi said MBS should get rid of his complex against the Muslim Brotherhood [Handout]

 

Henry II was said to have planned the death of his adversary, the Archbishop of Canterbury by simply mouthing the words: "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?". And that would be all that was needed for a plot to be cooked up to motivate assailants in service to the king to perform the deed. Similarly Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince may have used a sentiment to the very same effect: "Would someone kindly rid me of this troubling pest?" and the deed would be assured to be carried out. Despite the distance of a thousand years between those events, they otherwise have much in common.

Supreme rulers have a penchant for things going their way. The means used to achieve the required result are of little moment to them; what is important is that their wishes be carried out. They have no need to know the petty details; only the conclusion that the deed transpired successfully. In this particular instance of incredibly awkward decision-making and planning carried out with an utter lack of finesse by crude assailants it was inevitable there would be a lashback.

The murderous crew was careless and uncaring of consequences. The simple expedient of hauling the man back to Saudi Arabia for permanent imprisonment for irritating the royal power behind the throne would have been simple enough to carry to conclusion; the decision to murder the man, dismember the body and secrete it away somewhere represented a bleak, black slapstick farce of intelligence planning gone amok, which had its inevitable consequences.

Turkey's Erdogan, eager to ingratiate himself with the United States' investigation as a demonstration of just how powerfully cognizant he is about civilized behaviour -- despite that he sees nothing whatever unsettling to human rights by marginalizing, persecuting, and bombing minority indigenous Kurds who prefer that their status reflect that of resident/citizens of their ancient homeland, Kurdistan, not Turkey -- professed to be shocked and indignant over the bloody scene. And in matters of injuring and killing innocent civilians as a byproduct of conflict, the U.S. has no clean slate authorizing its investigation of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's Byzantine affairs.

 

Jamal Khashoggi. Mohammed Al-Shaikh/AFP/Getty

 

 

Jamal Khashoggi had a chequered past, consorting with terrorists, agitating against Jews and Israel, the perennial scapegoats of the Middle East, himself an enthusiastic member of the Muslim Brotherhood acknowledged as a terrorist organization by Egypt and Saudi Arabia. His slurs against the House of Saud's irritation factor cannot have been carried out without the knowledge that he was making himself a marked man. He lived in the U.S. in self-exile. To name him as a highly respected journalist is to elevate a sow's ear to a silk purse. His death is no great loss to a troubled world.

 

President Joe Biden wanted to break the revelatory news gently to his great good friend, 85-year-old King Salman, who knows realpolitik inside and out. The point of the release of the investigation pointing a finger of responsibility at this favoured son-and-heir-to-the-Saudi-throne simultaneously with a personal video conference was a patronizing exercise in a more powerful country gently handling a collegial country a political grenade; to be carefully handled lest an explosion result harming relations between the two countries. 

But like Turkey's Erdogan, America's Biden was intent on demonstrating how civilized the United States is, and how affronted civil society was in the wake of the details revealed in the ghastly 2018

assassination of the "Washington Post journalist". An odious act of state malfeasance, somewhat similar to Iran's hit squads hunting down enemies of the Grand Ayatollah, or Russian hitmen poisoning unsuspecting Russian dissidents abroad, occasionally succeeding in dispatching victims to lethal poisoning -- sometimes failing.