The following editorial originally appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:
When President Joe Biden screws up, he deserves to be called out just like any other American president. He had already generated considerable controversy with his hat-in-hand visit to Saudi Arabia during the summer to plead for more oil production to ease pressure on oil prices. The valid question at the time was whether Biden was doing it in a sincere effort to help American motorists or to deprive his Republican critics of a major point of attack heading into the fall election season.
Either way, the visit entailed a high-profile meeting with the de facto Saudi leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whom Biden had promised to hold accountable for the 2018 murder of U.S.-based Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The public extent of Biden’s get-tough accountability gestures consisted of a punishing fist-bump greeting with the crown prince. A full-blown handshake was seen as giving people the wrong idea that things were cordial and friendly.
The Khashoggi murder occurred inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, where the journalist and contributing columnist for The Washington Post had gone to finish paperwork for his upcoming marriage. His fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, waited outside as Khashoggi entered the consulate. He never emerged. Henchmen, who U.S. intelligence concluded were working on the crown prince’s orders, killed Khashoggi then dismembered his body, Mafia-style.
Last week, the Biden administration filed a court document stating that the crown prince qualified for immunity in a civil lawsuit by Cengiz regarding Khashoggi’s murder. The U.S. administration wasn’t required to intervene on the Saudi leader’s behalf but chose to do so anyway, citing the fact that the crown prince’s father, King Salman bin Abdulaziz, had recently named Mohammed as prime minister, a purely ceremonial title in a country where the king and crown prince have the final say on all matters of government, including who gets to live and who must die.
