Saudi Prince, US President, $$$, & Yemen

All the accumulating evidence indicates that Saudi Crown Prince and actual dictator Mohammed bin Salman almost certainly ordered the torture and murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a critical independent-minded Saudi journalist who had been writing for the Washington Post.

The immediate response of the US president and his “princely” son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was to try to explain away Prince MbS’s role and then as the evidence of murder piled up, to make clear: No matter what he did, Saudi money was too valuable to break relations or even embargo US weapons.

This is literally Murder Incorporated. Murder for Money. 

(Photo by Felix Josephat)

What was Saudi money buying? High-tech US weaponry. And what were these weapons for? A war against the people and especially the children of Yemen. A war that uses not only US-made weapons but the US armed forces themselves to seek targets for Saudi bombers to shatter food shipments into Yemen, to bomb a bus full of schoolchildren.

If the US-Saudi war against Yemen continues, 13 million Yemenites are in danger of starvation. A genocidal war.

This is a symphonic Rhapsody in Blood.   

For scenes of that bloody war, click on these videos compiled by MoveOn. Be warned: The violence is graphic:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/moveon/videos/1966419506752782/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MoveOn/status/1038052552212996097

What is this war about? A majority of Yemenites are Shia Muslims, most of them desperately poor. They were being oppressed by a government dominated by Sunnis. They rebelled against their tyrannical government, and forced it into exile.

But the Saudis are fanatically hostile to Shia Islam, they are furious at the regional importance of Shia Iran, and they entered into a three-cornered alliance against the Shia, aimed ultimately not only at Yemen but Iran.

This Triple Alliance brought together the hyper-dictatorial Saudi government, the would-be anti-democratic Trumpian US government, and the increasingly repressive Netanyahu Israeli government, not only bent on smashing the possibility of a self-governing and peaceful Palestine alongside Israel but more and more attacking Israeli Jewish critics and American Jewish opponents.

This Triple Anti-Iranian Alliance faced a problem. The Obama Administration, worried by the possibility of a nuclear-armed Iran, had put together an extraordinary diplomatic process in which Britain, France, Germany, Russia and the US achieved a unique agreement for total nuclear disarmament for Iran, total surveillance of Iran’s internal society and geography to prevent nuclear rearmament, and an end to US and other international sanctions against Iran.

That diplomacy was a brilliant fulfillment of the profound Jewish spiritual wisdom of the prayer: “Spread over us the sukkah of shalom”  -–-  the fragile, vulnerable hut that welcomes peace. How can such fragility bring peace? Because when conflicting nations see how vulnerable they both are, they can choose to make peace. The US and four other powerful nations felt vulnerable to the possibility of Iranian nuclear weapons. Iran felt vulnerable to the reality of damaging sanctions. So the two sides built a sukkah of shalom..

The Trumpists decided to destroy that sukkah of shalom, even though all the US allies wanted to preserve it. The Trumpists are instead obsessed with their desire to destroy the present Iranian governmental system. 

The next act in this Symphony in Blood is intended by the Trump-MbS-Kushner Murder Inc to mount intense pressures against Iran so as to overturn its government. Pressures that can easily turn into war when Iran resists.

Such a war would be far more damaging to the US than its self-destructive war against Iraq. Iran is far bigger, far more united against foreign enemies, and far more able to mount a strategic challenge to the US than was Iraq.

Of course, now that Obama diplomacy has ended Iranian nuclear-weapons research, Iran would be vulnerable to nuclear attack. And the Trumpian impulse to dominate and destroy has turned into  ending a key nuclear arms-control treaty with Russia, planning a trillion-dollar “modernization” of the US H-Bomb arsenal that can already bring on “nuclear winter” and wipe out life on earth, and redefining H-Bombs into “conventional” weapons.

The torture, murder, and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi was simply the unleashing of cruelty by those who see their power not as an instrument for compassion and healing but as a weapon for domination. Torture and murder of a critic are necessary to back up a genocidal war and the obsessive need for total domination.

It is no accident that when the President lied about  George Soros, an independent-minded pro-democracy billionaire (and Jewish at that!) -- by tweeting or vomiting the lie that Soros had "paid" for a caravan of Central Americans fleeing violent gangs --  within days a bomb is found in the Soros family mailbox.

What should happen now? The US Congress should forbid arms sales to Saudi Arabia, should forbid the use of US armed forces to assist in any way the Saudi war against Yemen, should call for UN sanctions until the Saudis stop attacking Yemen, and should require the reestablishment of the agreement to prevent an Iranian nuclear arsenal.

And if not?

 Let us not pretend to be surprised when the flood of blood that comes from killers who fly a national flag and wear a nation’s uniform calls forth more killers who fly no flag and wear no uniform.

Murder Inc. will buy us Murder Unlimited.