Op-Ed: It’s been 2 years since Khashoggi’s killing. Why is Trump still enabling the Saudi regime?
LA TimesTwo years have passed since the grisly murder and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post journalist and Saudi dissident, at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. Prince Salman himself acknowledged that the murder took place, as he put it, “under my watch.” Yet the United States continues to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia, supplying Prince Salman’s regime not only with the means to continue pursuing violence at home and abroad, most notably in Yemen, but also with an implicit endorsement of its autocratic agenda. Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, begun at the urging of Prince Salman, is an utter disaster — for Yemeni civilians, of course, but also for the kingdom. Across Yemen, fragments of arms supplied by American companies can be found in the remnants of bombed-out schools, hospitals and factories — enduring testaments to America’s complicity in Saudi Arabia’s war crimes. But in the years since Khashoggi’s killing, American policymakers have been unable to press the Saudi regime to stop killing civilians in Yemen or negotiate an end to the war.