Obama’s Saudi “Balance” By Rachel Ehrenfeld
Amnesty International has condemned the continuation of capital punishment under the new Saudi leader.
Obama’s detour to Riyadh to pay tribute to the dead King Abdullah and congratulate the new King Salman may have succeeded in resetting his relations with the Saudis.
Before his arrival in Riyadh, he let it be known that he would not discuss human rights violations with the new king. Instead, “The best way to deal with Saudi Arabia was [is] by applying steady pressure even as we are getting business done that needs to get done,” he explained in a CNN interview. The progressive media (CNN, NPR, BBC and their ilk) chose not to worry about his callous disregard for human rights; and, perhaps to distract attention, came up with the non-story of Michelle Obama’s uncovered hair, supposedly in defiance of the Saudi law. “Sometimes we need to balance our need to speak to them about human rights issues with immediate concerns we have in terms of counter-terrorism or dealing with regional stability,” Obama elaborated. “Balance” is the key word here.
This was not surprising. How could he condemn the barbaric Islamic law that dictates flogging and beheading, when he fails to identify Islamic terrorism?
Thus, the timing of the first beheading under King Salman (one of three or on the day), which was carried out “as punishment for [the executed man’s] crime and as a lesson to others,” may have taken place during the President’s visit to the Wahhabi Kingdom to send a message to the U.S. to mind its own business, and was King Salman’s way of celebrating Obama’s acquiescence to Islamist beheading in favor of “balance.” Or the message to Obama may have been that the new king, like the old one, disapproved of Washington’s courtship of the Muslim Brotherhood, which he State Department hosted while the President was in Riyadh, and which was outlawed as a terrorist organization by the Kingdom.
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