Washington Post Publisher Rips Biden for ‘Turning a Blind Eye’ to Jamal Khashoggi’s Murder In Searing Op-Ed
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The Washington Post published an op-ed that was sharply critical of President Joe Biden and his upcoming trip to Saudi Arabia and called out what it saw as the president giving the country a pass over Jamal Khashoggi’s murder.
The Post ran a column from Biden last week where the president defended the trip as a necessary step to bring down fuel prices and advance America’s international interests.
On Monday, Washington Post Publisher and CEO Fred Ryan publshed an op-ed of his own, scolding Biden for “going to Jiddah on bended knee” when he previously vowed to make Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman an international “pariah” over Khashoggi’s murder.
As Ryan reminded readers, Khashoggi was a Saudi political dissident and contributing columnist for the Post before he was killed in 2018 on Salman’s orders. Ryan accused Biden of “turning a blind eye to Jamal’s murder” in hopes of improving Democrats’ political prospects, and he also stressed that the president should be aware that making nice with the Saudis will have broader implications.
From the op-ed:
Biden needs the Saudis to increase their oil production to help keep global energy prices in check. The trip sends the message that the United States is willing to look the other way when its commercial interests are at stake. We have learned, through decades of hard lessons, that terrorists recruit by exploiting hatred of the United States among people brutalized by their own despotic leaders. That narrative succeeds best when Americans talk a good game about human rights until there’s something else we need more — such as cheap oil.
About-faces such as the one Biden is making erode our moral authority and breed anti-American resentment. They communicate to democracy activists and reform-minded governments worldwide that Washington is an unreliable partner. And that sows confusion and sabotages our diplomacy — the opposite of what Biden says his trip is trying to achieve.
Ryan continued to slam Biden’s “ill-conceived blunder” by saying the trip tells the world that America will put free press second to cheaper gas prices. He warned that “a grip-and-grin photograph with MBS signals to autocrats everywhere that you can quite literally get away with murdering a journalist as long as you possess a natural resource the United States wants badly enough.”
To salvage the situation, Ryan recommends that Biden insists on meeting with Saudi dissidents and demanding the release of political prisoners as a condition for meeting with Saudi leaders.
“If Mohammed bin Salman delivers anything less,” Ryan says, “Biden should refuse the staged handshake the crown prince so desperately craves. Otherwise, MBS’s cherished photo will belong in an album of American shame.”
