Francisco Rodriguez calls once again for lifting broad U.S. sanctions on Venezuela:
Karen Attiah is understandably disgusted by the cover story in the new issue of The Atlantic that provides the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, a platform to tell self-serving lies:
Most sickeningly, the Atlantic gave MBS a platform to not only continue his absurd denials of having anything to do with Jamal’s murder (even though it was carried out by figures in his close circle and the CIA concluded he gave the order to capture or kill), but also to present himself as the real victim. “The Khashoggi incident was the worst thing ever to happen to me,” the magazine reported that MBS has told people close to him. The murder “hurt me and it hurt Saudi Arabia, from a feelings perspective.”
The article does occasionally acknowledge some of the abuses that have taken place on the crown prince’s watch, but it is fair to say that they handled Mohammed bin Salman with kid gloves and let him off the hook for many of the crimes committed by his government since he rose to prominence and then became de facto ruler. The war on Yemen was Mohammed bin Salman’s idea more than any other top official in the kingdom, and he owns the devastating consequences of that war more than anyone else. As Attiah notes, the war and the Saudi government’s war crimes against Yemeni civilians receive the briefest of mentions.
The framing of the war as one “between Saudi Arabia and Iranian-backed Houthi rebels” oversimplifies the conflict and also fails to put the Saudi coalition intervention in context. Because it mentions Yemen only twice in passing, the article does not discuss the extent of the humanitarian crisis that the intervention has created. The crown prince’s television-viewing habits are explored more extensively than the kingdom’s signature foreign policy initiative over the last seven years. One would not know after reading this article that the war on Yemen has killed at least 377,000 people, most of whom were civilians perishing from hunger and disease. That would seem to be important information to include in a cover story profile of a foreign leader, but somehow it was not included.
Graeme Wood has defended the profile as necessary reporting:
All journalism is an attempt to bring readers things they do not know, and all interviews with heads of state involve getting them to say things they wish they had not said. To elicit these utterances, one must approach the subject sideways – and, most of all, keep him talking, and reveal more than he intends to say.
Read the rest of the article at Eunomia
Daniel Larison is a weekly columnist for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia. He is former senior editor at The American Conservative. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.