A NEWSLETTER FROM DAVID CORN

Joe Biden and Saudi Arabia: What the Heck?

By David Corn September 23, 2023

President Joe Biden and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman during a meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on July 16, 2022. Mandel Ngan/AP

Would you sacrifice a son, daughter, or loved one to protect the corrupt, murderous, autocratic monarchy of Saudi Arabia? Lay down your own life to safeguard the rule of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud? Well, it appears that President Joe Biden may be considering making a commitment of that sort. This week the news broke that Washington and Riyadh have been discussing a mutual defense treaty under which the US would pledge to support Saudi Arabia militarily if it were ever attacked. The models for such an agreement are the two military pacts that the United States has with Japan and South Korea; each one commits both countries to the defense of the other. This many not entail the deployment of American troops into battle. Then again, it might.

As part of the potential deal, Saudi Arabia would normalize relations with Israel, and the US would help MBS develop the country’s civilian nuclear program (which, of course, could also boost any Saudi effort to cook up nuclear weapons). Obviously, this would be a way to say eff-you to Iran. And, presumably, the accord would also block China from digging its claws into the kingdom and increasing its influence in the region. There’s plenty of geostrategic gamesmanship going on here.

But…a security pact with a repressive and misogynistic regime that violates human rights and kills its critics? Its victims infamously include Jamal Khashoggi, an American resident murdered and cut into bits by a Saudi hit team in Istanbul in 2018 in an operation that, according to US intelligence, was overseen by MBS. More recently, a Saudi court sentenced a retired schoolteacher to death for tweets deemed offensive to the government. His brother is a well-known critic of the Saudi regime who lives in the United Kingdom.

During the 2020 campaign, Biden vowed to make Saudi Arabia a global “pariah.” He said, “Under a Biden-Harris administration, we will reassess our relationship with the Kingdom, end US support for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, and make sure America does not check its values at the door to sell arms or buy oil.” The Saudi-precipitated war in Yemen has led to mass killings of civilians and what the United Nations dubbed the worst manmade humanitarian crisis in the world.

This is the nation the United States wants to pledge to protect? And in a deal that could be a political boon for Bibi Netanyahu, the authoritarian and corrupt leader of a far-right, extremist Israeli government? It seems rather problematic.

Looking to gut-check my initial reaction, I reached out to Joe Cirincione, a national security analyst and author who recently was president of the Ploughshares Fund, a foundation that focuses on nuclear nonproliferation and conflict resolution. He told me:

According to reports, the defense agreement with Saudi Arabia will be similar to those we have with Japan and South Korea. But Japan and South Korea are democracies. Saudi Arabia is a dictatorship.

Biden once pledged to make Saudi Arabia a pariah for its murder of a journalist now he wants to make it a major security partner, what has changed in Saudi Arabia’s behavior to warrant the shift? Nothing.

Then, there’s the question of who Saudi Arabia would be making the deal with in Israel. Is it really smart to be rewarding Bibi Netanyahu? Can we trust him to make a good deal? There’s nothing in his relationship with the United States or with Biden personally that gives us confidence that he would respect whatever vague promises on Palestinian rights he would agree to in order to gain diplomatic recognition from Saudi Arabia. This deal would screw the Palestinians.

All this comes at a time when the Middle East is becoming less important to the United States. The main thing that has made the region a vital interest to the west has been oil. But oil is declining in importance with the shift to electric vehicles, and the increase in solar and wind power. We are less and less dependent on oil for energy needs. So why commit ourselves to expensive and dangerous new military alliances in a region that we are basically not going to care much about by the middle of this century?

My hunch coincides with Cirincione’s analysis. Of course, we can concentrate on the grand game of real-life Risk here. A US-Saudi mutual defense treaty that leads to normalized relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia would be a blow to Iran. It could lower the temperature in the region. And the United States could boast it is trumping China. Nevertheless, it sure has a sour taste.

Worse, the same week that these negotiations became public, Biden met with Netanyahu in New York City, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, and extended the Israeli leader what Netanyahu most desires: an invitation to the White House. This was a slap in the face to the millions of Israelis who have been out in the streets protesting Netanyahu’s attempts to grab more power for his far-right government, which has been expanding Israeli settlements in Palestinian areas—a policy that deliberately undermines any peaceful resolution of the Israeli and Palestinian conflict.

Biden administration officials are not talking openly about the negotiations with the Saudis. Many details are still to be worked out. That includes the nature of the commitment the United States would have regarding defending Saudi Arabia. But whatever is decided, it seems a good bet that a US-Saudi treaty would generate a fight in Congress. It’s not hard to envision Democratic human rights champions and Republican isolationists joining forces to oppose such a pact.

Figuring out how to interact with a repressive government can be tough. Consider China. Despite its genocidal treatment of the Uighurs and its suppression of free expression, the United States still must deal with Beijing regarding climate change, trade, and other crucial matters. Saudi Arabia does have lots of oil and cash, and the United States, through both Democratic and Republican administrations, has maintained an alliance with its autocratic rulers, selling them billions of dollars in weapons (which profits US military contractors). But turning this antidemocratic kingdom from pariah to partner feels like geostrategic whiplash. It might end up producing the biggest battle of Biden’s presidency.

Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at ourland@motherjones.com.

Now This Is How You Make a Political Ad

Gov. Andy Beshear (D-Ky.) is running for reelection. It’s likely to be a bruising campaign in red Kentucky. This week his campaign released a fierce ad. It features a young woman who was raped by her stepfather when she was 12 after years of sexual abuse. “Anyone who believes there should be no exceptions for rape and incest could never understand what it's like to stand in my shoes," she says. She then addresses the GOP state attorney general who is challenging Beshear: "This is to you, Daniel Cameron. To tell a 12-year-old girl she must have the baby of her stepfather who raped her is unthinkable." After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, Kentucky passed an abortion ban that does not include exceptions for rape and incest. Cameron backed that measure and defended it from legal challenges.

The Beshear ad is powerful and straightforward. Democrats across the nation aiming to make abortion a key issue in the 2024 elections ought to give it a good look.

An Apology for Chile

This month marked the 50th anniversary of the military coup in Chile that toppled the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende and that was encouraged by President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, his national security adviser. It was a dark moment for both the South American nation and the United States. After Allende was elected to the presidency in 1970, Nixon ordered the CIA to “make the economy scream” and covertly block Allende’s inauguration through the instigation of a military coup. Allende made it into office, but the CIA continued its efforts to foster a “coup climate” and, in Kissinger’s own words to Nixon, “created the conditions as great as possible” for the military takeover. The bloody coup finally came in 1973 and led to decades of military rule by General Augusto Pinochet, during which 40,000 Chileans were killed, disappeared, tortured, or exiled.

Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), and Greg Casar (D-Texas) this week introduced a congressional resolution commemorating the coup, apologizing for the US role, and calling for further declassification of US records related to the coup. Peter Kornbluh, a researcher and author at the nonprofit National Security Archive, who has for decades pressed for the declassification of US documents on covert operations against Allende and support for the Pinochet regime, says, “This Congressional resolution marks a milestone in pressing for an accounting, and offering a semblance of accountability for what the U.S. did in Chile fifty years ago. The Biden administration should heed the resolution's call for further declassification, and clearly repudiate past U.S. policy with a clear executive branch expression of atonement."

I don’t expect the Republican House to pass this much-needed statement of accountability. But the Biden administration does not have to wait for Congress to approve this resolution. It could take these steps on its own, which would be the decent and just thing to do.

Soldiers supporting the September 11, 1973, military coup in Chile take cover as bombs are dropped on the presidential palace in Santiago. Enrique Aracena/AP

Dumbass Comment of the Week

It was a busy week for our hard-working judges. Delivering a speech to the Ron Paul Institute, retired Army colonel Douglas Macgregor, an occasional Fox News contributor, let it rip. He exclaimed:

It’s time to recognize that wokeism is perversion, ladies and gentlemen. It’s sick, it's wrong. Our government is in the hands of parties addicted to money and psychiatric drugs. A few believers at the top hate our civilization and are determined to destroy it…We must disengage from this war in Ukraine.

What does military assistance to Ukraine have to do with wokeism or psychiatric drugs? Macgregor went on to declare, “Most of [the people running the government] remind me of people that we used to punch out in bars for entertainment…Don't be afraid of these people. Once there are enough us…we will prevail.”

Macgregor was involved in the planning of the Iraq invasion—which might explain why so much went wrong. He also used to appear on the Kremlin-funded RT channel. Not surprisingly, after Donald Trump picked him to be ambassador to Germany in 2020, the Senate blocked his nomination.

At a congressional hearing featuring Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg this week, Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Calif.) thought he scored a clever point. After Buttigieg declared climate change is real, the congressman bleated, “This one’s called autumn, sir…This climate change right now is called, autumn.”

You know what LaMalfa was thinking: Got you, Buttigieg! But the secretary zinged back: “That’s the seasons changing, which, respectively, is not the same thing as the climate changing.” Buttigieg, for the win.

Another Republican lawmaker thought he was smarter than he is. This week, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) tweeted a bold statement: “The American media is an arm of Ukrainian propaganda.”

Why would he say that? Because after a September 6 missile strike on Kostiantynivka in eastern Ukraine killed at least 15 civilians and injured more than 30 others, American media reported that the attack was caused by a Russian missile—which is what the Ukrainian government announced. But, it turns out, the culprit was an errant Ukrainian air defense missile. Vance was exploiting this error to bash the media. But how do we know the media made a mistake? It’s because of…the media. The New York Times assigned six reporters to investigate this bombing, and they discovered the damage was done by an off-course Ukrainian missile. That was hardly serving as an arm of Ukrainian propaganda.

The much-derided Elon Musk also made a lame attempt to bash the media. Pointing to an increase in migrants crossing the US border this year, he tweeted, “Strange that there is almost no legacy media coverage of this. About 2 million people – from every country on Earth – are entering through the US southern border every year.”

No legacy media coverage of this? I googled “immigration border” and was presented a batch of stories on the current crisis from the legacy media:

I suppose Musk doesn’t bother to check with reality anymore.

When Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), a GOP presidential candidate, was asked about the United Auto Workers strike, he replied: “I think Ronald Reagan gave us a great example when federal employees decided they were going to strike. He said, you strike, you’re fired. Simple concept to me.”

This comment was both mean and stupid. Autoworkers are not federal workers. A president cannot fire them. Moreover, Scott was declaring that workers should have no right to strike. Without that, many American workers would likely have no five-day work week, no health care coverage, no decent wages. This is far-right extremism and an embrace of brutal corporatism.

A picture, we’re told, is worth a thousand words—and sometimes those words can be quite dumb. Here is a shot of Stephen Stills (of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young) joining Eric Clapton at a posh Los Angeles fundraiser for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that raised $2.2 million for Kennedy’s longshot presidential campaign.

Clapton is well known as an obnoxious anti-vaxxer. His support for Kennedy, a conspiracy theorist and leading promoter of Covid and vaccine disinformation, is not a surprise. But Stills? This is not teaching your children well.

Republicans and conservatives had conniptions this week after Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer relaxed the Senate dress code so that Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) could hit the Senate floor rocking his iconic shorts-and-hoodie look. Conservative commentator Erick Erickson huffed,

Dems who were outraged by January 6 rioters storming the Capitol because of the violence wrought against that great Temple of Democracy are okay with a man at war with the English language and pants getting to wear a hoodie and shorts onto the Senate floor. Just no bison helmets.

Was Erickson seriously comparing an insurrectionist assault that sought to overturn the constitutional order of the republic with Fetterman’s unorthodox fashion choices? Or was this self-satire? The judges couldn’t figure that out.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis also felt compelled to weigh in on this important matter: “To show up in U.S. Senate with that and not have decency to put on proper attire, I think it's disrespectful to the body.”

Perhaps. But do you know what's truly disrespectful? Thousands of domestic terrorists showing up at the Capitol and assaulting cops, ransacking the place, and violently threatening legislators. What's also disrespectful is suggesting, as DeSantis did, that those marauders who have been convicted might deserve pardons.

In this highly competitive field, a newcomer took this week’s prize. When Attorney General Merrick Garland testified this week before the House Judiciary Committee, a lot of Republicans, looking to draw blood, said a lot of stupid things. But Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.) stood out in the crowd. She told Garland that many Americans are now afraid of their government supposedly because of the prosecution of the January 6 rioters. In rambling, hard-to-follow remarks, she attempted to explain her point:

There was probably some people who came on January 6 here, you know, who had bad intent. But a lot of good Americans from my district came here because they are sick and tired of this government not serving them. They came with strollers and the kids. And there was a chaotic situation because the proper security was not provided. …[Now FBI agents] show up at people’s houses. You had the magistrate in my town, FBI phone numbers all over the district. Please call them...People are truly afraid.

She then ranted for several minutes; it's tough to summarize. She appeared to say that special counsel John Durham’s report showed that the Justice Department was operating like the KGB. (It did not state that.) For asserting that the January 6 riot was caused by the government “not serving” Americans and for maintaining Americans ought to fear the Justice Department because it is prosecuting the rioters, Spartz lands in first place.

The Mailbag

Much mail poured in regarding the issue about George Saunders’ wonderful book, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, most of it saying the same thing: I am getting this book. I’m glad that piece resonated so deeply with readers and am delighted to be a proselytizer for this work. Cheryl Byrne wrote in with additional information about Saunders: “He has been hosting an online reading/writing class called Story Club. It is so enlightening.” That was news to me, and I checked it out. It’s actually another newsletter in which Saunders continues to study and explore particular short stories. I will let him explain:

The plan is to pick up where that book left off, widening beyond the Russians into stories from other times and traditions. I see us working together on some essential questions:

* Why do certain stories compel us to finish them?

* How can something entirely made-up change the way we think and feel about the real world?

* What can we learn about the mind by watching it read and process a story?

The newsletter is a marvelous follow-up to the book. If you’re going to subscribe to a newsletter other than Our Land, it’s a good choice.

D. Stone also sent in a recommendation: “Fitzgerald's unfinished novel [The Last Tycoon] is a master class in description and digression, with the added bonus of his personal notes.”

Harry Rabin had a comment about my book, American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy:

I read and liked your latest book. The major question to me is why does the GOP base demand a politics of "hate, grievance, resentment, paranoia, authoritarianism, and demagoguery." The United States is a democratic republic with over a 200-year history. So why do, as your book points out, millions of Americans vote for a leader who spouts what the base demands? Trump got 74 million votes last election and is now leading the Republican primary. It also could be true that a majority of the people who do not vote would vote for Trump if they wanted to vote. That leaves, in my mind, more than half of the American electorate willing to vote for the "hate, etc." Why? Can you, can someone explain why a democratic vision turned into an authoritarian vision?

Oh boy, that is the $64 billion question. Authoritarian demagogues have often captured the imagination and votes of large swaths of the public here and in other nations. That shows there are dark impulses (such as racism and tribalism)—as well as legitimate disaffection and alienation—that can be exploited. Germany seemed a rather sane place until you-know-what. Father Charles Coughlin preached hate and millions of Americans slurped it up. His antisemitic radio screeds in the 1930s made him the most popular man on the airwaves. About 30 million Americans—out of a population of 120 million—tuned into his broadcasts. Scoundrel Joe McCarthy whipped up millions with his crusade of paranoia and hate. George Wallace did the same in the 1960s. Donald Trump was the first major-party nominee in modern times to go whole-hog into the politics of grievance, resentment, bigotry, and authoritarianism. And it worked? Why? That might take another book. But it’s important to remember in both 2016 and 2020, a majority of voters did not accept his hate-fueled vision. Yes, too many did. That’s why American democracy remains imperiled.

Responding to the issue examining whether the present threat to American democracy is just too big an issue for many folks to confront, Pat Barsalou emailed:

What excellent points you make in this issue. I too wonder why this story does not get the attention of more of the folks so concerned about our democracy. As is so often the case, Our Land cuts right to the heart of things! And gets there with such elegant writing and voice. Still the best writing (and reading!) out there in my opinion!

Wow. I am humbled. I try every issue to present ideas and facts that you don’t readily find elsewhere. It is very encouraging when readers notice.

MoxieCam™

“Is summer really over?”

“Yes, Moxie, it is.”

“No more hot days and hoses?”

“Probably not for a while.”

“How long is a while?”

“Maybe nine months.”

“Okay… What’s a month?”

Read Recent Issues of Our Land

September 19, 2023: The threat of Cornel West; Nils Lofgren sings about truth; Gus Russo deconstructs the latest JFK assassination revelation (or is it?); and more.

September 16, 2023: Can the media meet the challenge of the GOP’s bogus impeachment?; why Mitt Romney should read American Psychosis; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Tim Gurner); the Mailbag: MoxieCam™; and more.

September 12, 2023: The right-wing authoritarian threat beyond Trump (Project 2025); American Psychosis and C-SPAN; Barbie and the corporate exploitation of exploitation; the Rolling Stones’ stereotypical “Angry”; and more.

September 9, 2023: A story too immense (Rudy Giuliani and Russia)?; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Tucker Carlson); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

September 6, 2023: One of the best books I’ve ever read; the Mailbag; Full Circle offers a fascinating neo-noir trip; and more.

September 1, 2023: Can Donald Trump rally be barred from the 2024 ballot?; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Tucker Carlson): the Mailbag; Jade Bird and LP belt it out (separately); and more.

August 26, 2023: The bottomless cynicism of Tucker Carlson; the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

August 23, 2023: David Brooks’ blind spot; American Psychosis, the paperback; whatever happened to our service economy?; the Mailbag; Citizen Cope takes a “Victory March”; and more.

August 17, 2023: Donald Trump, mob boss (then and now); Dumbass Comment of the Week (Matt Gaetz); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

Got suggestions, comments, complaints, tips related to any of the above, or anything else? Email me at ourland@motherjones.com.

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