Khashoggi, Dynasties, and Double Standards By Joseph Duggan

Khashoggi, Dynasties, and Double Standards

By Joseph P. Duggan

A new Broadside pamphlet, Khashoggi, Dynasties, and Double Standards by Saudi Arabia expert, Joseph P. Duggan reveals how, as 2018 ended, an orchestrated propaganda campaign paralyzed U.S. foreign policy. The trigger was the killing in Istanbul of Jamal Khashoggi, a member of Saudi Arabia’s wealthy and politically powerful oligarchy. Mainstream media and misguided, melodramatic politicians hoodwinked millions by portraying Khashoggi as a martyr for press freedom and democracy. The real Khashoggi was nothing of the sort.

In death, Khashoggi became known to millions of consumers of Western mainstream media who had never before heard of the man. He was described as a courageous journalist. He was mourned as a martyred advocate of radical reform in Saudi Arabia. He was hailed as a champion of democracy and human rights as they are proclaimed in the West.

Duggan says, "It seems everybody's in D.C. is talking about Jamal Khashoggi, but I actually talked WITH him. I lived in Saudi Arabia and did writing and public relations for the top executives of Aramco, the Saudi oil company. I met Khashoggi at a conference in Dubai and talked extensively about his work. It's misleading to call him a "journalist." There is no independent journalism in Saudi Arabia or any of the Arab Gulf countries. He was an agent of influence, an intelligence operative, a propagandist for the Saudi government. The last year of his life, he turned away from the Saudi regime and began attacking it, on behalf of Qatar, Turkey, and the Muslim Brotherhood. His murder was horrible; it was a brutal political assassination. But Khashoggi was not a martyr for freedom, democracy, or human rights - he never supported these values or principles." 

The propaganda campaign concerning Khashoggi's murder is very misleading and it undermines truth-based, realistic, U.S. national security policy and foreign relations. The U.S. has to have alliances with regimes that DO NOT share all of our values. That's reality. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are what the great, wise Jeane Kirkpatrick called "traditional autocracies." While some of these allies' practices are repugnant to us Americans, they are still our allies, and we are allied against what Kirkpatrick distinguished as "revolutionary autocracies" - Khomeinist Iran, and the radical movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood, the latter of which gave birth to Al Qaeda and ISIS.

Moralistic Republican senators such as Rubio and Graham are among the worst threats to our national security today because they go against any sense of realism and prudence. For example, on the one hand they want to egg us on to a catastrophic war with Iran, while at the same time they want to impose crippling sanctions against OUR ALLY Saudi Arabia because of the largely phony Khashoggi propaganda campaign. How can we deter Iran if we punish our ally?

President Trump’s efforts to restore realism to foreign policy must contend not only with Democrats but also with naive Republicans who reject the national-interest realism of Jeane Kirkpatrick, author of “Dictatorships and Double Standards.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joseph P. Duggan is the head of C-Suite Strategic Counsel, an international business and public affairs consultancy. He served on the editorial board of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, in the Reagan State Department on the staffs of Ambassadors Jeane Kirkpatrick and Edward Rowny, and as a White House speechwriter for President George H.W. Bush. From 2009 to 2015 he worked in Saudi Arabia as speechwriter for the CEO of Aramco.