Saudi Arabia is evidently undergoing some pretty extreme housecleaning, approaching its own “Night of the Long Knives.” It’s hard to know what to make of it (though those of us who remember Alwaleed Bin Talal’s fatuous offer of ten million dollars just after 9/11, properly refused by Rudy Giuliani, have our own opinions of the now-arrested prince.)
Things over there seem pretty primitive and chaotic, almost tribal, replete with the image of billionaire princes forced to sleep on bare mattresses in the ballroom of the local Ritz Carlton. The Saudis have their own way of doing things.
Or do they?
These days things in Washington resemble Riyadh more than we care to admit. And unlike the Saudis, we don’t have Iran’s clients flying missiles into our airports. What’s our excuse?
Not much really — just hatred and the lust for power. We’re tribal too — and then some. Indeed, we may be worse. How else to explain what’s going on inside our major political institutions — from Congress to our political parties to the Department of Justice to, needless to say, the FBI? The skullduggery has been endless.
The latest is the reaction to Donna Brazile’s disclosure that the Democratic Party primary process was, essentially, fixed in favor of Mrs. Clinton. The former DNC head is most likely correct because the mortified (and defensive) responses to her revelations are packed with lies. That Ms. Brazile was concerned for her own safety because of the unsolved Seth Rich murder is also worth noting, speaking of long knives. Meanwhile, the mainstream media barely mentions that anything has occurred. (The Saudis are more transparent.)
And then there are the matters that can be lumped together as G-Men in Non-Action, i. e. the FBI. The latest revelation here is that James Comey, chief law enforcement officer in the land at the time, at first wrote a document accusing Hillary Clinton of having been “grossly negligent” in her email scandal and then crossed it out… or somebody crossed it out for him… to replace it with, for some reason or other, “extremely careless.” Could it be that “grossly negligent” in the handling of national security material is a crime and she was running for president? Nah. James Comey is a man to be trusted.
And so are Robert Mueller and Rod Rosenstein. That we have just learned they were in charge during the approval of the Uranium One deal, that there was money laundering, bribes and all sorts of double-dealing by the Russian company involved (that they knew about) before twenty percent of U.S. uranium was put under Russian control, should not disturb us. Because of this knowledge, they are all the more qualified to conduct the Russia investigation. After all, Brutus, as Marc Antony assured us, is an honorable man. And so is Bill Clinton. He had to speak a full two hours for that $500,000 after the deal was made. So are they all honorable men.
That there are renewed questions about the Fusion GPS Trump dossier, that it may have been used to instigate the entire Russia investigation although filled with unsubstantiated, actually ludicrous, allegations, also should not give us pause. After all, Bret Stephens believes it and he is an honorable man. He writes for The New York Times.
But back to Saudi Arabia. They’re the bad ones here, not us. They behave in a manner that civilized people must condemn. We know this because Donald Trump approves of what King Salman is doing, cleaning house of characters like Bin Talal, and Trump, as we know, is not an honorable man.
How do we know? Because he has disgraced our country in Japan. He is uncouth and does not even know how to feed koi. How bad is that! He could have killed the poor….Oh, wait….
Roger L. Simon is an award-winning novelist, Academy Award-nominated screenwriter and co-founder of PJ Media. His latest book is I Know Best: How Moral Narcissism Is Destroying Our Republic, If It Hasn’t Already.
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