The recent murder and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi has upset the Washington establishment in a manner that the deaths of tens of thousands citizens of Yemen have not, presumably because those poor souls had the misfortune not to live in Washington. In any event, everyone who is anyone in Washington now has a conscience about those evil and corrupt Saudi folks, which leads to Saudi-shaming articles like this one, “How a smooth Saudi operative charms Washington and defends ‘the indefensible’”, by Politico scribe Nahal Toosi “outing” (more or less) the suave n’ savvy Ali Shihabi as perhaps the Saudis’ smoothest mouthpiece in DC, just the man to explain, and explain away, the occasional beheading and dismemberment.
In the course of her article, Nahal informs us that “Shihabi has developed a sterling reputation among Washington foreign policy elites who consider him a loyal — but not completely doctrinaire — interlocutor between Washington and Riyadh,” quoting one such elitist, Likudist mouthpiece and former convicted criminal Elliott Abrams,1 as follows:
“I’ve had conversations with him where I’ve said, ‘The Saudi government just did X. I don’t get it. It doesn’t strike me as smart,’ He’d say, ‘I don’t think so either. I’m trying to get it reversed.’”
Well, one can wonder what sort of actions Mr. Abrams considered to be “not smart”—like the brutal and bloody invasion of Yemen, perhaps?—but one also has to wonder how the equally suave n’ savvy Mr. Abrams can have his worries assuaged by Mr. Shihabi’s mere assurance that “I’m trying to get it reversed.” Mr. Shihabi, after all, is a mere mouthpiece, a paid functionary of the Saudi government, a PR man, a flack. Is Mr. Abrams trying to explain, and explain away the sins of a fellow professional?
Afterwords
Over at the American Conservative, Daniel Larison has been chronicling the on-going horror of the Saudi invasion of Yemen from the beginning, an attempt, apparently, of the Saudis to match our record in Iraq that has been aided and abetted by everyone in DC from Barack Obama to Elliott Abrams.
- Abrams was convicted of two misdemeanor counts of withholding information from Congress during the Iran-Contra affair. George H.W. Bush, who believed that important people have the right to lie when it suits their convenience, pardoned him. ↩︎
