Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 23, 2018)
4A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 2018 editor@dailyastorian.com KARI BORGEN Publisher JIM VAN NOSTRAND Editor Founded in 1873 JEREMY FELDMAN Circulation Manager DEBRA BLOOM Business Manager JOHN D. BRUIJN Production Manager CARL EARL Systems Manager PRO-CON Should the US cut ties with Saudi Arabia over the Khashoggi affair? AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis Mourners protesting the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi hold a candlelight vigil outside Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul last month. PRO: Cut ties with Saudi and stop supplying its bombing of Yemen W ASHINGTON — Each day since worst humanitarian crisis in the world today, Oct. 2, new evidence has emerged with 14 million people on the brink of star- vation, according to the UN. that the killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a resident The New York Times editorial board has of Virginia, was a premeditated murder. noted that the Saudis were trying to “starve At the same time, it is also increasingly Yemen into submission,” a strategy that clear that the murder was approved at constituted “war crimes.” the highest levels of the Saudi Arabian Until recently, the Saudi and UAE bomb- ers were dependent on mid-air refueling government, most likely including the current ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin from U.S. planes. The U.S. also provides assistance with targeting and intelligence Salman. The Saudis at first maintained that and logistics. Khashoggi had left the Saudi consulate in There are currently bipartisan bills in Istanbul, Turkey, alive; they then claimed, both Houses of Congress to cut off U.S. incredulously, that he was killed there in the participation in the war. course of a fist fight. House Concurrent Resolution But we also know that a team of 138, introduced by Ro Khanna 15 Saudis, including “an autopsy (D-Calif.), has 56 co-sponsors. expert” and others with links to These include high-level leadership, Saudi high officials and intelligence, such as the ranking Democratic was flown in at dawn on Oct. 2. members of the Foreign Affairs, In the past four years, the United Armed Services, Appropriations, MARK States has supplied 60 percent of and Judiciary Committees. WEISBROT Saudi arms purchases — many of The Senate bill, led by Bernie which are used to kill civilians in Sanders (I-Vt.), and Mike Lee Yemen. (R-Utah), got 44 votes in February and is Should the U.S. government cut off likely to get a majority in the wake of the weapons sales to Saudi Arabia in response Khashoggi murder. to this atrocity? Of course it should. But These bills have been introduced under President Donald Trump has opposed this the 1973 War Powers Resolution, a law that measure, and The Washington Post reports reinforced the Constitution’s provision that that Congress might not even have a chance Congress should decide whether or not the to vote on it. US military should be deployed in war. However, there is something vastly Under the two resolutions, if the more important and obvious that the U.S. Congress votes to end U.S. military partic- ipation in the Saudi war, the president will Congress can do — regardless of what have 30 days to withdraw. Trump wants — about Saudi atrocities. The In the coming months, tens of thousands Congress can stop U.S. participation in the of people across the country will be contact- Saudis’ genocidal war in Yemen. ing their representatives and senators to per- Since 2015, the U.S. military has been suade them to vote to end this war that has providing mid-air refueling to Saudi and nothing to do with U.S. national security. UAE planes conducting airstrikes that have They will be up against some of the killed thousands of civilians in Yemen — including a school bus with 40 children that most powerful interests in the world: the military-industrial complex — including was hit by a U.S.-supplied bomb in August. These bombing raids also have hit water, the weapons manufacturers that Trump has sewage, and other vital infrastructure, caus- expressed concerns about — as well as the ing thousands more deaths and a million national security state. But if enough people people infected with cholera. participate in this effort, the war will end. But most catastrophically, the air Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Cen- ter for Economic and Policy Research and strikes and the Saudi blockade and siege of the president of Just Foreign Policy. Yemen’s major port city have caused the CON: Khashoggi’s killing was despicable, but US needs Saudi help in keeping Mideast peace W ASHINGTON — Let’s be clear: Directly or through proxies, Tehran now the Saudi murder of Washington controls in large measure the governments Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi of Syria, Lebanon and Iraq; it’s propping up Syria’s Bashar Assad as he slaughters his own was a despicable act by a regime that, even people; and it’s sending increasingly lethal after enacting modest reforms recently, still weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon, just across tolerates virtually no domestic dissent. Israel’s border. We should all be outraged, we should Washington plans to reimpose sanctions demand the truth, and we should look for against Iran next month that it hopes will cut ways to condemn such action in the clearest all Iranian oil exports; these sanctions will terms, such as by sanctioning the regime and force companies to choose between doing the individuals involved. But let’s be clear about something else: The business with Iran and with America. U.S. officials also hope to convince world can be, as Thomas Hobbes said of the SWIFT, the global financial messaging natural state of humanity, “nasty, brutish, and service, to sever ties with Iran, which would short.” more fully isolate the Islamic Though, particularly in the post- Republic from the global economy. World War II period, the United States Among other things, Washington has promoted freedom and democ- racy, it also has made its necessary needs Riyadh, the region’s leading Sunni Muslim government, to provide “deals with devils” in the interests of enough oil to calm oil markets — if arms control, regional stability and U.S. sanctions against Tehran, the other short-term demands. LAWRENCE leading Shia power, rattle the markets Washington’s relationship with J. HAAS enough to potentially send oil prices Riyadh is one such deal, and our sky-high and threaten the global urgent needs across the Middle East economy. do not allow us the luxury of making the Tehran, which seeks regional hegemony, morally pure decision of severing all ties with is a major concern of not just Washington but the kingdom. also of such unlikely allies as Jerusalem and The U.S.-Saudi relationship dates back Riyadh. to an early 1945 meeting between Franklin Though they share no peace treaty, Saudi- Roosevelt and King Abdul Aziz aboard the USS Quincy in the Suez Canal, in which FDR Israeli relations have never been warmer or more public, driven by their joint fear of, and agreed to provide the Saudis with support and military training in exchange for Saudi oil and cooperation to contain, an expansionist Iran that wants to destroy Israel and weaken Saudi its support for the United States in the region. Arabia. That meeting came four years after FDR, To be sure, Saudi Arabia is ruled by an in his State of the Union address, expressed intolerant, sometimes vicious, regime. hopes that, after the war, people all over the Over time, we should encourage the king- world would enjoy “four freedoms” — of dom to expand its modest reforms and provide speech and religion and from want and fear. more freedom to its people. That’s no different While idealistic, however, FDR had no than what we’ve done for decades with auto- illusions that the Saudi kingdom would cratic allies and adversaries alike. abandon its hardline Islamic rule and provide For U.S. interests in the region, however, such freedoms to its people. He simply made a Saudi Arabia is clearly a lesser evil than Iran. necessary deal with this devil. Put simply, we need Riyadh too much, as Fast forward to today’s Middle East, where we seek to contain an insidious force in the the adage “the enemy of my enemy is my Middle East, to sever ties with it. friend” often applies. Lawrence J. Haas, former communica- The United States needs Saudi support to tions director for Vice President Al Gore, is a rein in the America-hating, terror-sponsoring, nuclear weapons-pursuing, regional destabiliz- Senior Fellow at the American Foreign Policy ing and human rights-abusing regime in Iran. Council.
