What I Learned Over Lunch With the Real Jamal Khashoggi

Lindsey Graham should listen in.

Joseph P. Duggan December 7, 2018

Like all murders, Jamal Khashoggi’s was an evil deed. Should the United States respond to it with a major disruption in relations with Saudi Arabia? No — emphatically no.  Far from being indifferent to Khashoggi’s fate, I was deeply anguished by his murder.

I once had the pleasure of a lengthy, cordial, and fascinating conversation with Khashoggi.............I also remember who and what he really was. He was the scion of one of the wealthiest families in Saudi Arabia and a tremendously privileged member of the Saudi power structure................

Khashoggi knew, and his worldly-wise friends in the U.S. media know, that the only possible consequence of success in Khashoggi’s final project — stridently criticizing the current Saudi ruler Prince Mohammed bin Salman — would be to weaken Prince Mohammed or bring about his downfall and replacement by another Saudi prince. Prince Mohammed’s successor, whether he takes power five minutes or five decades from now, will be another Saudi prince, and the world won’t know whether or not it likes his regime until they’ve experienced it.............

Insisting that Khashoggi’s murder was an attack on freedom of the press, journalistic integrity, and prospects for greater freedom and more humane regimes in the Middle East is dangerous self-delusion.

Repeatedly describing Khashoggi as a “Washington Post journalist” is as preposterous as calling Ed Rogers, the Republican superlobbyist who also writes a regular column for that newspaper, a “Washington Post journalist.”...........To Read More....