Joe Biden Can’t Quit the Saudi “Pariahs” – By Jeremy Scahill (The Intercept) / Dec 14, 2022
Despite his campaign pledges, the president has continued to back Saudi Arabia and its murderous de facto ruler.
IT’S HARD TO imagine what more Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman could do that would actually spur the Biden administration to use the full force of the presidency to oppose his murderous reign in Saudi Arabia. Ordering the execution and literal butchering of a Washington Post journalist certainly didn’t do it. Conducting mass executions of its own citizens? Old news. Waging a merciless scorched-earth campaign against the civilian population of a poor neighboring country? The U.S. continues to support that one. Let’s have another fist bump, old pal.
Two years into Biden’s presidency, it is crystal clear that the Saudis have nothing significant to fear from the U.S. government. From a historical perspective, that is not in the least shocking. For decades, Democratic and Republican administrations have propped up the Saudi monarchy, lathering it with weapons sales and intelligence sharing, all while normalizing the draconian, antidemocratic grip on power held by the monarchy.
When Donald Trump was president, a lot of Democrats were given political cover to finally come around to opposing the Saudi-led campaign of annihilation in Yemen. Trump was so cartoonishly cozy with MBS and the royals as their air war intensified and arms sales escalated that it became an almost irrelevant footnote that it was the Obama-Biden administration that gave the initial green light to the Saudi-led war in the first place. Or the fact that Barack Obama began bombing Yemen in December 2009 and continued to hit the country with drone strikes and cruise missile attacks throughout most of his presidency. In fact, by the time Obama left office, his administration had offered the Saudis more military support, $115 billion, than any in the history of the seven-decade U.S.-Saudi alliance.
CONTINUE > https://theintercept.com/2022/12/14/biden-saudi-arabia-mbs/
