#daniel shapiro

Clearly at Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman [MBS]'s direction, a terrible murder was committed, essentially out in the open. And the Saudis lied about it to President Trump for days. They are still lying. Trump himself may care little, motivated by his own amorality or the over-hyped job-creating impact of Saudi weapons orders. But MBS did not take into account that in ordering the Khashoggi hit, he crossed all lines of acceptability to the American public and the bipartisan membership of Congress. Indeed, the harshest criticisms and calls for consequences have come from Republican Senators Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio. Again, one can be cynical about this. Saudi repression is not new, and perhaps the American political system could accommodate it if it stayed below a certain level of visibility. The outcry was not nearly as loud as perhaps it should have been over the imprisonment of Saudi women’s rights activists, which took place at the same time that women were finally given the right to drive cars. But MBS miscalculated badly by not understanding that the kidnapping and dismembering of a U.S. resident journalist, whose only crime was expressing his views, simply was more than Americans could tolerate.