I think that Adam Garfinkle’s dissection of the “Khashoggi Affair”, to use a word ghoulishly appropriate to the matter, at American Interest is interesting but, unlike Mr. Garfinkle, I don’t find a thing funny about it. I think it’s scandalous.
The first scandal is the fascination with the gruesomeness of what apparently happened to Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Sadly, that’s a commonplace reaction but I find it no more becoming than cock-fighting.
The second scandal is that we have anything to do with the parties involved at all. The Turkish authorities, the Saudi authorities, and Mohammed bin Salman in particular are all awful people. They are vicious, cruel autocrats and while pragmatism may dictate we need to deal with them we shouldn’t pretend that we like them or can believe a word they say.
The third scandal is that the affair so quickly transmogrified into a domestic political issue. That should never have been the case and I don’t much care where the blame resides.
The fourth scandal is that the Washington Post should consider Jamal Khashoggi “one of their own” at all. In an age when a comic is defenestrated for nasty wisecracks made a decade ago that they should think of Jamal Khashoggi, whose history suggests that he supported views illiberal in the extreme, in such a light or even favorably regardless of how charming he was in person is a sad commentary. By all accounts Hitler was charming in person, too. I think that journalism has lost its way.
Forget it Dave, it’s Chinatown.